Editor's note:
Four years after the death of Zhang Guobao, the former deputy director of the National Energy Administration and the first director of the National Energy Administration, his book "Glorious History: 40 Years of China's Development and Reform" was published by the People's Publishing House.
This book collects more than 100 articles interviewed by Director Zhang Guobao during his lifetime, published signed articles, public speeches and unpublished articles, dozens of which are from the "National Treasure Vision" column opened by China Economic Weekly. The book truly describes some important events that he experienced after his retirement from the leadership positions of the State Planning Commission and the National Energy Administration, the process of decision-making, construction and operation of major projects, as well as the profound research and thinking on important issues such as China's reform and development, industrial layout, economic construction, and engineering decision-making in the more than 40 years of participating in reform, opening up and modernization, and vividly reflects the glorious course of China's development and reform, especially industrial and economic construction, since the reform and opening up.
These are all what Director Zhang Guobao has personally heard and thought, especially the details of the story are closely related to the production and life of the people, such as the transmission of gas from the west to the east, the transmission of electricity from the west to the east, the control of haze, the construction of railways, the revitalization of the Northeast, the import of nuclear power, the development of nuclear power, etc., the author will tell his own experience and thoughts eloquently and fascinatingly. These articles reveal many important policy decisions, major layouts, and little-known tortuous processes, vivid stories, and lessons learned from the front and back of major projects since the reform and opening up, and have important historical value and practical enlightenment significance.
The following content is excerpted from the important historical events in the book, so that readers can know and understand the precious historical moments of China's reform and development.
1. $6 billion loan-for-oil package.
In order to raise funds, Rosneft proposed a cooperation plan to the Chinese side for loans for oil, hoping to borrow $6 billion from China, and the Russian side will repay it with the money from the sale of oil. Previously, Chinese banks had never lent such a large amount of money to foreign companies in a lump sum. At the same time, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy declined, and China was generally not optimistic about the Russian economy, and was also skeptical about Russia's credit, and it was difficult to get support in China's financial circles for a one-time loan of $6 billion to Rosneft.
At that time, the national director held a meeting to coordinate the opinions of various departments. Only ** and I made it clear that we advocated giving this loan to Rosneft. We believe that China needs to buy Russian oil, and the import volume from Russia is increasing year by year, as long as this loan is linked to China's purchase of Russian oil, the risk of the loan is controllable, we should seize this opportunity to expand energy cooperation with Russia, and break the deadlock in the construction of the Sino-Russian ** pipeline. At that time, the China Development Bank, of which Comrade Chen Yuan was president, had always adhered to the policy of lending to support the country's economic construction in accordance with the national industrial policy.
The Sino-Russian ** pipeline has been negotiated for 15 years.
In the 90s of the 20th century, the oil sector began to contact the Russian side. In the early days, PetroChina contacted the Russian Yukos oil company, but the Russian Federation ** and Yukos did not agree with the idea, the project did not make substantial progress, and then experienced multiple twists and turns, and later, the $6 billion loan for oil program won the priority status of the oil transmission branch line China.
Specifically, in 2004, the Russian Federation ** public auction of Yukos subsidiary Yukos Oil and Gas Company 7679% of the shares to settle Yukos' tax problems. Baikal Financial Group won the bid. After that, Rosneft became Yugans Oil & Gas by acquiring all the shares of the Baikal Financial GroupThe owner of 79% of the shares, while the American shareholders of the Yukos company sued the Russian Federation in the United States for embezzlement of private property. In order to raise funds, Rosneft proposed a cooperation program to the Chinese side for loans for oil. In 2005, PetroChina signed a contract with Rosneft, according to which the Russian side will supply 48.4 million tons of oil to China by rail from 2005 to 2010, and obtain a loan of 6 billion US dollars from the Chinese side to repay the loan with the best proceeds.
Second, the Three Gorges power transmission.
The Three Gorges Project was completed at a time when electricity consumption was at a low point, and many provinces and cities said it was difficult to accept the Three Gorges electricity. Chongqing used to say that Chongqing had made sacrifices for the Three Gorges migrants and that it should share the electricity from the Three Gorges. Later, he said that Chongqing had made great contributions to the resettlement of the Three Gorges and could not accept electricity from the Three Gorges. Later, Chongqing mainly consumed hydropower from the Ertan Power Station in Sichuan. But then electricity was scarce again, especially during the dry season, and Chongqing blamed the Three Gorges for not supplying electricity to Chongqing.
Henan says it is mainly based on thermal power and does not need electricity from the Three Gorges. Jiangxi says it is a small agricultural province that does not need much electricity. Anhui also says that it is an agricultural province, and that it has two coal mines, and it does not need electricity from the Three Gorges. Only Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang have always said that they accept electricity from the Three Gorges.
During the period of power supply, some people in the Hubei provincial delegation questioned why they should send electricity from the Three Gorges to East China and why they could not stay in Hubei to develop Hubei's economy, but they did not know that there was a huge difference between the power generated by the Three Gorges during the wet season and the dry season. It can reach nearly 20 million kilowatts in the wet season, and only about 5.5 million kilowatts in the dry season. To solve this huge gap in the bumper and dry period, it is necessary to build more than 10 million kilowatts of thermal power generation in Hubei to balance, but in the wet season, the 10 million kilowatts of thermal power will be stopped, which is very uneconomical, only interconnection and mutual supply is the right way to solve the problem.
Before 1999, China's power grid was still not connected to each other, and each managed its own. In the same year, Zhang Guobao served as deputy director of the State Development Planning Commission, in charge of energy, transportation, infrastructure and industrial science and technology. After taking office, Zhang Guobao's idea for power grid construction is to build a decentralized and independent large and small power grid into a unified power grid that can be interconnected and supplied to each other across the country. It can be seen from the process of power transmission from the Three Gorges that at that time, all localities had not yet formed a correct understanding of the necessity of interconnection and mutual supply of electricity.
At the beginning of 2011, when Zhang Guobao retired from the post of director of the National Energy Administration, the interconnection of the national mainland power grid had been realized. Today, in the vast country, from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau on the roof of the world to Hainan Island on the coast of the South China Sea, it is covered by an interconnected power grid, which makes people sigh that this is a great project of the century.
Third, the design scheme that was evaluated by experts was the least liked by the people, and the design scheme that was eliminated by experts was voted by the people but won the first place.
Premier Zhu Rongji decided that the design plan for the National Centre for the Performing Arts would be selected by means of world bidding. The proposals for each country to participate in the voting are selected by a 13-member expert committee headed by Wu Liangyong. The best design option selected by the expert group was the Japanese one. At the same time, in accordance with Premier Zhu Rongji's instructions, the design models of various countries participating in the voting were placed in the history museum, so that the vast number of visitors could vote for their favorite proposals. As a result, the crowd chose the favorite design solution, which was actually the Canadian one that was eliminated by the experts. In the end, the leading group for the construction of the National Centre for the Performing Arts respected the opinions of the masses and allowed the Canadian plan to enter the second round of voting.
Before voting, Premier Zhu instructed not to be bound by any box.
When the designers of the Canadian plan who entered the second round of voting guessed what kind of design the Chinese liked, they thought of the Great Wall, red walls and yellow tiles, so they revised the design of the first round and made the wall design like the Great Wall, which looked a bit out of kind and out of style. As a result, in the second round of voting, the Canadian program was eliminated.
The second place winner by the panel was a design proposal from the United Kingdom. However, according to Premier Zhu Rongji's guiding ideology that he is not bound by any box, France's Andrew's ellipsoid plan without any frame stands out.
Now the location of the National Center for the Performing Arts is determined, and for various reasons, it was only ready to be built in 1998. There has been a lot of debate and disagreement about the design, but the idea of "building a world-class building without being bound by the boxes of the past" is clear. In the end, there was a majority in favor of the ellipsoid scheme of the French architect Paul Andrew.
In the meantime, another interesting thing is that different groups of people have different views on the design of the National Centre for the Performing Arts. The cultural community generally favored Andrew's design. Representatives and members of the cultural circles of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, represented by Ying Ruocheng, asked for the adoption of Andrew's ellipsoidal design scheme. There are also differences in the architectural circles of the South and the North. In general, architects in the north do not like Andrew's design, while in the south, such as architects in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Guangdong, they prefer to adopt Andrew's design. This phenomenon is quite interesting.
Fourth, the timing of the issuance of 3G licenses.
China has not issued a 3G communication license for a long time, and Ren Zhengfei led Sun Yafang and others to Beijing to find me and asked me to issue a 3G communication license as soon as possible. The reason he gave me was that the existing 2G frequency resources had been exhausted and the number of mobile communications customers was still increasing rapidly, so it was necessary to issue 3G licenses as soon as possible to meet the needs of the rapidly increasing number of mobile communication users. I asked Ren Zhengfei, how many mobile communication mobile phones can be accommodated by the 2G communication frequency resources given now?He was not able to answer at the time.
In the 90s of the 20th century, 3G had two international standards, WCDMA and CDMA2000, and China also developed the TD-SCDMA standard. Each standard is lobbying China** to adopt their standards for issuing 3G licenses. Huawei has carried out technical research and development on the three standards, and also hopes to issue 3G licenses as soon as possible. But at that time, Zhang Guobao believed that the frequency resources of 2G had not yet reached the point of complete exhaustion, and there should be some time for China's TD-SCDMA to plump up. Later, Zhang Guobao and Xi Guohua, former vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, reviewed this history, and Xi Guohua also believed that if we could not withstand the pressure before the Olympic Games and rapidly expanded 3G, it must be the world of WCDMA.
Fifth, the chip industry has missed an important talent.
I've met Zhang Rujing many times, several times at a factory construction site in Shanghai. Zhang Rujing is a very dedicated, very hardworking, and very professional person. When I met him, it was lunchtime, and he was eating a lunch box in the simple office of the construction site. But unfortunately, after ** came to power, he was desperately suppressed and fined 15$50,000. TSMC sued him for technology infringement and sued him in a California court in the United States - because Shida Semiconductor, which Zhang Rujing founded in Taiwan, China, was sold to TSMC by other shareholders without his knowledge, and most of the team that Zhang Rujing brought to the mainland were the technical backbone of Shida. As a result, Zhang Rujing lost the lawsuit and was fined a huge amount. Soon after he was sued a second time, alleging that he had breached the settlement agreement, at 013 micron chips. This time, SMIC countersued TSMC in the Beijing High Court, and the lawyer was also full of confidence, but it was rejected by the Beijing High Court and did not enter the trial procedure. The relevant departments watched from the sidelines, no one understood and mediated, and completely regarded Zhang Rujing as an outsider. It's kind of incredible when I think about it now. In the end, Zhang Rujing lost the case again, was fined a huge fine, and resigned in tears.
Among the factors affecting the development of integrated circuits, Zhang Guobao puts talents, not systems, in the first place. And he once missed Zhang Rujing, a talent who may become a leading figure in China's integrated circuits, which made him very sorry.
Zhang Rujing has rich experience in building a series of integrated circuit factories in the United States and Taiwan, China, and has built 12-inch chip production enterprises in Shanghai and Beijing, which are much higher than the 908 and 909 projects built by the former Ministry of Electronics Industry in the early years. These factories were also the predecessors of what is now SMIC. In Zhang Guobao's view, Zhang Rujing is entirely likely to become a leader in China's integrated circuit industry. I dare not say that Zhang Rujing can be compared with Zhang Zhongmou in Taiwan, China, at least not inferior to Zhang Zhongmou. Later, Zhang Rujing's twists and turns also made Zhang Guobao sigh: "At that time, we did not fully understand the importance of leading figures. Losing such a leading figure as Zhang Rujing is a missed opportunity. ”
This article was published in China Economic Weekly Issue 24, 2023).