Decisive war
Where to begin the transformation of the then abjectly poor Shenzhen, which received 30 million yuan in start-up money from the Central Government in the form of bank loans, was an imminent issue facing Wu, who was appointed the city’s first Party chief in 1980.
“After the loans were granted in September, we celebrated in the way that we mark the Lunar New Year,” Wu recalled. “But then followed a ruckus about how the money should be used.”
A fierce quarrel erupted between engineers and city leaders who met in a makeshift room in October 1980 to discuss where the money should go.
Engineers insisted that Luohu, closest to Hong Kong, was the most ideal place to develop real estate and commerce first, and could earn first pot of gold for Shenzhen by attracting foreign investment. The idea was bitingly opposed by some senior leaders because the low-lying Luohu was vulnerable to flooding.
The two sides were engaged in a battle of words, each refusing to yield. The meeting was deadlocked after a young engineer lost his temper with two senior leaders and smashed a chair, accusing them “ignorant of urban construction but unbearably arrogant.”
Wu, who chaired the meeting, broke the ice by voting for the engineers and decided to level Luohu Mountain to raise the land.
Critics lodged complaints against Wu to the provincial government for “giving orders on a whim.”
The quarrel did not subside until December when Jiang Zemin, who was then vice director of the national import and export commission, urged at a provincial meeting to speed up construction of Luohu, four months after he made a field trip there in August.
“It rained when I was shown around Luohu. The whole area was submerged,” Jiang said at the meeting. “My feet were soaked in the water. So did the feet of businessmen from Hong Kong. We need to put an end to this.”
Tens of thousands of workers were employed round-the-clock to level Luohu Mountain and raise the land by an average of two meters.