Chen Yun

"Mao Zedong was not an engineer. He was a librarian at Peking University who then helped found the Communist Party, after which he became a warlord. After he established the People’s Republic in 1949, Mao’s stature became nearly godlike. He spent much of his time reading literature and philosophy, leaving the details of running the state to technocratic deputies like Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yun. Mao’s gifts in military leadership as well as poetry collided in a folksy slogan he was fond of repeating: *Ren duo, li liang da*. With people come power."

"Among the victims were the preponderance of basic government functions. The Cultural Revolution had made a mockery of anything that could be as organized as a national census. Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun (the most senior official on economic policymaking), and other top leaders knew that China’s population was large, but they were in the dark about actual numbers. The leadership guessed that the population might have surpassed nine hundred million. When statistical authorities estimated that the population numbered nearly one billion people at the end of 1978, the leadership reacted with shock. No longer was a big population a cause of celebration. So many hungry mouths threatened to overrun Deng’s modernizations."