Yu Guangyuan

Yu Guangyuan
于光遠
Born (1915-07-05)5 July 1915
Shanghai, Republic of China
Died 26 September 2013(2013-09-26) (aged 98)
Beijing, People's Republic of China
Residence Beijing
Fields Economics
Institutions Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Alma mater Tsinghua University
Notable students Wu Jinglian, Chen Yuan, Yang Xiaokai
Known for Market Economic Reform in China

Yu Guangyuan (Chinese: 于光遠; pinyin: Yǘ Guāng Yuǎn; born 05 July 1915, died 23 September 2013) was a prominent Chinese economist, philosopher and government official. He was one of the first proponents of market-oriented economic reforms in China, and served as a close adviser and speech-writer to the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

Yu was a senior member of the Political Research Office of the State Council, a deputy president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a deputy director of the Science and Technology Commission of the State Council.

Early life

Yu Guangyuan was born in Shanghai in 1915 and graduated from Tsinghua University, where he studied theoretical physics under Zhou Peiyuan, who showed Yu's dissertation to Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study. His classmates at Tsinghua included Qian Sanqiang, He Zehui and Wang Daheng.[1][2] Yu, however, participated in the December 9th movement (1935), organized the National Liberation Pioneers (Mingxian), which was intended to broaden the anti-Japanese alliance, and joined the Chinese Communist Party shortly before the Japanese invasion.

World War II and Cultural Revolution

At Yan'an, he preoccupied himself with the economics of agriculture. From 1937 to 1982 he held a variety of positions and was struggled against and sent to a May 7th Cadre School during the Cultural Revolution.[3]

Reform era

In 1975 Yu was assigned as a senior member of the Party Research Office of the State Council, and later of the Political Research Office and concurrently a deputy president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a deputy director of the Science and Technology Commission of the State Council; he worked closely with Deng Xiaoping before and during Deng’s periods of ascendancy, and drafted the reformist leader's famous speech at the Third Plenary Session.[4]

Academics

Known as "Encyclopedic," Yu is one of the most prolific authors of his time. In the 1960s, he authored and edited the "Political Economy Reader" with Su Xing and Gu Zhun, which served for decades as the standard economics textbook in China. The young Wu Jinglian was his research assistant in the writing project. Since the late 1970s, Yu proposed that commodity economy and market economy are compatible with socialism, a process of which China still remained on the initial stage. Supported by Deng Xiaoping, he was also one of the leading voices in a public debate over the measurement of truth in relation to politics. Yu also wrote extensively on the economics of education, games, leisure and entertainment.

Major publications

References


  1. ↑ Yang, Jian; Dai, Wusan (2006). Tsinghua University and Modern Chinese Technology (清华大学与中国近现代科技). Tsinghua University Press. p. 185. ISBN 9787302120148.
  2. ↑ Shanghai Jiading Archives http://dangan.jiading.gov.cn/zjby/daby/bycg/content_343736. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ Yu, Guangyuan (1995). Memoirs of the Cultural Revolution (文革中的我). Shanghai: Shanghai Yuandong.
  4. ↑ Yu, Guangyuan; Vogel, Ezra F.; Levine, Stevine I. (2004). Deng Xiaoping Shakes the World: An Eyewitness Account of China's Party Work Conference and the Third Plenum (November-December 1978). EastBridge. ISBN 978-1891936531.
  5. ↑ Teiwes, Frederick C. (2006). "Review: Deng Xiaoping Shakes the World: An Eyewitness Account of China's Party Work Conference and the Third Plenum (November-December 1978) by Yu Guangyuan; Ezra F. Vogel; Steven I. Levine". Pacific Affairs. 79 (2): 315. Retrieved 8 July 2017.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.