Background
Yu Zuomin was born in 1930, Daqiu Zhuang, China.
作敏 禹
Yu Zuomin was born in 1930, Daqiu Zhuang, China.
Yu Zuomin was educated locally.
Since agriculture could not serve as the source of wealth for Daqiu Zhuang, Yu Zuomin focused on pursuing industrial ventures. Daqiu Zhuang was among the first villages in China to build factories. In 1977, after borrowing money from a variety of sources, the village established its first small steel mill. Within a year, the steel mill earned more profit than the village had achieved since 1949. In the next few years, more facto- ries, with products ranging from steel pipes to stationery for schoolchildren, were established, and profits soared. By the early 1980s, the individual factories in Daqiu Zhuang were incorporated into a village holding company called Daqiu Zhuang Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce United Company. Party Secretary Yu Zuomin became the president of this new rural conglomerate and was often called ‘Boss Yu.’ Under the new rural enterprise system, Daqiu Zhuang operated more like a collective. The guiding prin- ciple of Yu Zuomin was ‘economics first.’ He established an incentive system according to which factory managers received 1 percent of profits. Through the 1980s Daqiu. Zhuang experienced by growing wealth as a result of the rapid development of rural industry in the economic reform era.
In 1983, Yu invited the celebrated writer from Tianjin, Jiang Zilong, for a two-week visit to the village. During his visit, Jiang listened to Yu’s stories about the village’s poor past and its riches today. In spring 1984, Jiang published a short story entitled Yanzhao Elegy (Yanzhao Beige) in People’s Literature. The story is essentially an account of Daqiu Zhuang’s road from poverty to wealth, and its publication turned the village into a national sensation. Village cadres and government officials began to visit Daqiu to observe its success for themselves. By 1990, with 200 subsidiary companies hiring mainly migrant rural laborers, Daqiu Zhuang’s steel output constituted 3 percent of that of the country. The fame of Daqiu village reached its zenith in 1992 when the China Statistical Yearbook named it as the richest village in China. Daqiu Zhuang became a model village, and its new status was inseparable from its leader Yu Zuomin.
Toward the end of 1992, in investigating the financial undertakings of one of the village companies, Yu ordered the arrest of a company clerk who was then beaten to death by village thugs during the interrogation. Yu subsequently ordered a cover-up and detained the policemen who arrived at the village to investigate the incident. What followed was a standoff between thousands of villagers and migrants organized by Yu and armed with steel pipes, and the military police who were blocked from entering the village. Yu Zuomin’s political fall occurred in 1993, when he was charged with a number of crimes including involvement in the death of the company clerk and instigating the military confrontation with the national paramilitary police. He was put on trial, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Yu died of a heart attack while on parole in Tianhe Hospital in Tianjin in 1999. According to some accounts, he committed suicide by taking an overdose in the hospital.
An area of largely alkaline soil, Daqiu Zhuang had been prone to crop failures and was very poor. The opportunities for change arose in the late 1970s, a few years after the death of China’s revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, when the new leader, Deng Xiaoping, and his supporters launched drastic economic reforms. The most significant of the new policies was the so-called ‘Household Responsibility System’, by which land could be contracted to individual peasant households. Meanwhile, rural industrial enterprises, once condemned as being capitalistic, were encouraged. Frustrated with the eco- nomic plight of his village and its 2800 inhabitants, Yu Zuomin, party secretary of Daqiu Zhuang, seized the opportunities afforded by the rural reforms and led the village on the road to economic prosperity.
However, with the wealth and fame of Daqiu Zhuang, Yu Zuomin became arrogant, and his behavior became increasingly dictatorial, with little tolerance of different opinions or criticism.