ABSTRACT
Chen Yu reforms were rejected by Mao, by the Party, and by a coalition of planning and heavy industrial officials, and, in their stead, what became the Great Leap Forward developed. Thus Yu's mistakes in planning and an abortive cover-up for an offshore oil rig disaster nicely served Deng's purposes and allowed Deng to remove Yu and his followers from leading planning and heavy industrial positions. The nature of planning itself changed in the 1980s. In the early years of the decade of reform, planners did attempt to revive the Soviet-style material-balance planning, but such efforts were discredited by the Ten-Year Plan and the downgrading of the Petroleum faction. The 1984 Party Decision on Industrial Reform further altered the nature of planning in mainland China. Yet prior to the massacre, the situation remained grim, particularly in the material allocation system, the central nerve system of any planning system.
