MOSCOW (Reuter)--The Soviet Union is experimenting with a system linking wages to productivity and making allowances for more difficult work, the Communist party newspaper Pravda reported today.

A three-year experiment, beginning this year at several factories in Leningrad, appears aimed at improving the prestige of certain professions and raising productivity.

Soviet leader Yuri Andropov has said changes in the Soviet economy are long overdue, and in recent weeks economists have proposed various ideas aimed at improving productivity.

Pravda said the Leningrad factories would be assigned a fixed sum for salaries depending on the number of workers at the start of the experiment--a move designed to encourage managers to raise productivity by paying more to fewer workers.

The system allows for bonuses to be paid, regardless of generally accepted salary levels, to those directly involved in improving production methods or engaged in difficult work.

(text of March 22, 1983 Vancouver Sun article)

China's Congress Meeting Opens Amid Calls for Economic Reform

Beijing and Guangdong Vie To Establish an Agenda For National Priorities

BEIJING--The unspoken question at the annual session of the National People's Congress is who is setting the agenda for China today: Beijing or Guangdong province, the economic engine and pacesetter of reform.

The congress meeting, a two-week annual legislative session that opened Friday, is serving as both a display case for Deng Xiaoping's new "accelerate reform" line and a window into the declining financial clout of the central government. As has been his practice for several years, Mr. Deng didn't show up for the two-week session. But a re-energized reform agenda sparked by the 87-year-old patriarch's January sweep through Guangdong has been rolling off the tongue of every Chinese official who steps up to the podium in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. Guangdong is the province that encompasses the Shenzhen special economic zone, where capitalist ideas have been let loose.

Premier Li Peng, usually a proponent of tight controls and slow change, opened the session Friday by declaring that "opportunity knocks but once"*

(text of March 23, 1992 Wall Street Journal article)

*-I certainly can't speak for Li Peng, not knowing the man,. But i am a Christian. I admitted to Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Teddy Kennedy, and all when i did the 1978 "International Diplomatic Work...on a direct basis" for the world's children that i had some serious personal lifestyle decision mistakes when i was young. I endured my punishment for them and i like to think i have long since left behind and atoned for them.
Elsewhere on this website i explained what the U.S. Congress was doing when i did this "International Diplomatic Work...on a direct basis" for the world's children and President Carter was busy with the Camp David Summit with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. They were debating what led to what you find if TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE.
This is the source of the idea for the title of the (first) book i have received the recommendations to write about the "International Diplomatic Work...on a direct basis" for the world's children: The man who set the record in 1972 for the biggest electoral victory in the history of the United States to that point in time turns out to have been the commander of a team that broke laws during the campaign. Faced with this, what does the world's "great power" democracy do? Is it really mature enough to admit its mistakes, correct its mistakes, and take steps that the mistakes are not repeated?
Or...
My point here is that i know, from personal experience, how important a "second chance" is. And i regard this as completely consistent with my Christian faith.
So to me--"opportunity knocks but once" only when the first "situation" with some sort of opportunity resulted in death(s) preventing the availing of a second opportunity to make amends or do better.