ABSTRACT
The Investigation Team arrived in Shanghai on January 15, 1980, and returned to
Beijing on February 13. During our 28-day stay in Shanghai, we heard more than
ten reports given by the Shanghai Planning Commission and the Shanghai Economic
and Trade Commission, as well as related companies and enterprises. We held sev-
eral workshops and fi nally reported our fi ndings over the course of an entire day to
the leadership of the municipal government. We also visited a commodities exhibi-
tion, a free market, a temple fair and a couple of factories, and our trips proved to
be rewarding. Shanghai was in the past the most developed capitalist area in old
China. After 1949, when the PRC was founded, the Central government stabilized
prices by economic measures. The Central government then helped capitalist busi-
nesses in the processing of goods, placing orders and distribution, enabling the
capitalist businesses to undergo a socialist transformation. Many of the local cadres
in Shanghai today are well experienced in economic transformation and in market
regulation to serve the needs of the State. After the Third Plenary Session of the
Eleventh CPC Central Committee put forward the guiding principle of “combining
planned regulation with market regulation for economic reform,” Shanghai was
among the fi rst to respond. It has accumulated a lot of valuable experience.
