In the evening of the 27th, the prominent figure of the “reform faction” of the CCP in the 1980s, Weng Yongxi, passed away due to illness at the age of 78. Weng Yongxi, along with former CCP Vice President Wang Qishan, economist Zhu Jiaming, and economist Huang Jiannan, were once part of the “think tank” during the period of former CCP leader Zhao Ziyang.
According to reports from Financial News Network and Hong Kong’s “Ming Pao,” Weng Yongxi passed away on Tuesday evening (January 27).
Weng Yongxi was sent to work as a educated youth in Inner Mongolia in his early years, graduated from Peking University, and in 1979 served as a trainee journalist for the “China Farmers’ Daily.”
Former CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang’s secretary, Li Xianglu, mentioned the four individuals in an article published in “Yanhuang Chunqiu,” saying that in late August 1980, the then relatively unknown Weng Yongxi, Huang Jiannan, Zhu Jiaming, and Wang Qishan wrote a letter to the central government proposing suggestions on economic work. Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang, after seeing the document, summoned them for a face-to-face discussion.
In 1984, the Rural Development Research Institute was established in Beijing, with Wang Qishan as its director. This was a subsidiary organization under the State Council Rural Development Research Center led by Du Runsheng.
However, Zhao Ziyang, who had engaged in discussions with Weng Yongxi and others that year, resigned in disgrace during the June Fourth Incident in 1989.
According to public records, after 1989, among the four individuals, Weng Yongxi chose to venture into business, Zhu Jiaming chose to go abroad, Huang Jiannan also left the official position, and only Wang Qishan remained in office. Wang Qishan retired from the position of Vice President of the CCP in 2023.
In his later years, Weng Yongxi served as a consultant for the Farmers’ Entrepreneur Association, the chief consultant of the Digital Assets Research Center of the China Investment Association, and a visiting researcher at the School of International Relations at Peking University.