Editing Zhao Ziyang (section)

=== Economic reforms in Sichuan ===
Zhao was appointed [[Party Secretary]] of [[Sichuan]] in 1975,<ref name=":322" />{{Rp|page=149}} effectively the province's highest-ranking official. Earlier in the Cultural Revolution, Sichuan had been notable for the violent battles that rival organizations of local Red Guards had fought against each other. At the time, Sichuan was China's most populous province,<ref name="independent" /> but had been economically devastated by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, whose collective policies had collapsed the province's agricultural production to levels not seen since the 1930s, despite a great increase in the province's population.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bramall|first=Chris|date=1995|title=Origins of the Agricultural "Miracle": Some Evidence from Sichuan|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/654997|journal=[[The China Quarterly]]|issue=143|page=753|jstor=654997|issn=0305-7410}}</ref> The economic situation was so dire that citizens in Sichuan were reportedly selling their daughters for food.<ref name="BBC1">{{Cite news|date=17 January 2005|title=Obituary: Zhao Ziyang|language=en-GB|work=[[BBC News]]|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2989335.stm|access-date=29 June 2021}}</ref>

During his tenure in Sichuan, Zhao introduced a series of successful market-oriented reforms, which distributed farmland to families for private use, and allowed peasants to freely sell their crops on the marketplace.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Tabeta|first=Shunshuke|date=10 March 2019|title=Cradle of China's farm reforms shines without spotlight|url=https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Cradle-of-China-s-farm-reforms-shines-without-spotlight|access-date=17 July 2021|website=[[Nikkei Asia]]|language=en-GB}}</ref> His policies also permitted greater autonomy and productivity incentives for factory managers.<ref name=":Chatwin" />{{Rp|page=8}} The reforms led to an increase in industrial production by 81% and agricultural output by 25% within three years.<ref name="BBC1" /> Zhao's reforms made him popular in Sichuan, where the local people coined the saying: {{Zh|s="要吃粮，找紫阳"|p="yào chī liǎng, zhǎo Zǐyáng"|labels=no}}. (This saying is a [[Homophonic puns in Standard Chinese|homophonic pun]] on Zhao's name, loosely translated as: "if you want to eat, look for Ziyang.")<ref name="independent" /><ref name="Prisoner" />{{Rp|xiii}}