Chen Yun

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Lore & Background

Chen Yun was born in Qingpu, Jiangsu (now part of Shanghai) in 1905. He worked as a typesetter for the Commercial Press of Shanghai, which printed revolutionary books and Protestant Bibles. He played a prominent role as a younger organizer in the labor movement during the early and mid-1920s, joining the CCP in 1925. Following the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, he was an important organizer under Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi. After Chiang Kai-shek turned against the CCP in 1927, Chen fled to his hometown but soon returned to Shanghai to secretly continue his work as a labor unionist. He was one of the few Communist Party organizers from an urban working-class background, worked underground as a union organizer in the late 1920s, participated in the Long March, and served on the Central Committee from 1931 to 1987. He became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee in 1933. Despite receiving no formal education after elementary school, he became active in economics.

Reader's Guide

Chen Yun's significance lies in his long career as a pragmatic economic planner. He joined the CCP Central Committee in 1930 and the Politburo in 1934. On the Long March, he was one of four Standing Committee members who attended the January 1935 Zunyi Conference. He left the Long March in spring 1935, returned to Shanghai, and in September 1935 went to Moscow as a CCP representative to the Comintern. In 1937 he returned to China as an adviser to Xinjiang leader Sheng Shicai, then joined Mao in Yan'an. In November 1937 he became director of the Party's Organization Department, serving until 1944, and by the early 1940s was in Mao's inner circle. His writings were included in study materials for the Yan'an Rectification Movement of 1942, during which he protected some comrades accused of being Trotskyites and criticized campaign exaggerations in the Shandong base area. His economic career began in 1942 when he was assigned financial management of Northwest China, later adding the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region and Northeast China. In 1949 he became head of the Central Finance and Economic Commission. He helped draft the First Five-Year Plan with Zhou Enlai, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchun, and Nie Rongzhen. After the Great Leap Forward, he worked with Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai on economic reconstruction, advocating a 'bird cage' economy where the market is kept contained like a 'bird in a cage'. Demoted during the Cultural Revolution, he returned after Mao's death in 1976. In the 1980s he was a key architect of Deng's reform and opening up but later grew conservative, slowing reforms as leader of the CCP's conservative factions. He resigned from the Central Committee in 1987 but remained influential as chairman of the Central Advisory Commission until 1992.

Did You Know?

• Chen Yun was also known as Liao Chenyun, having taken his uncle Liao Wenguang's family name after being adopted following his parents' death.
• He worked as a typesetter for the Commercial Press of Shanghai, which printed revolutionary books and even Protestant Bibles.
• Chen was one of the few Communist Party organizers from an urban working-class background and received no formal education after elementary school.
• During the Yan'an Rectification Movement of 1942, Chen protected some comrades accused of being Trotskyites and criticized the campaign's exaggerations in the Shandong base area.
• Chen used the metaphor of a 'bird cage' to describe the socialist economy: if the cage was too small the bird would not survive, but if left open the bird would fly away.