We explain what the People’s Republic is China and how its history passed until today. In addition, its main leaders and their great economic expansion.
What is the People’s Republic of China?
The People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, after the Chinese revolution. It’s about A socialist-communist state governed by the Communist Party of China from its origins and until today.
He was directed by the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong between 1946 and 1976. Under his government, China recovered his unity and independence, after a century of foreign interventions in the hands of the Western powers and Japan. Mao transformed the Chinese economy into a communist planned economy, and established repressive control over political dissent .
With the death of Mao, the moderate faction of the party consolidated its power and began to implement reforms oriented to economic liberalization, although it maintained the characteristic centralized planning of the communist regime. Since the 1980s, the Popular Republic of China managed to impose itself as an economic power and remains constantly growth.
- See also: communist countries in the twentieth century
Mao Zedong Government in China
The first economic measures
After a prolonged crisis due to the succession of political-military events (Japanese invasion and occupation and civil war), the Chinese economy, which had known certain progress since the end of the 19th century, could return to a path of growth.
The first economic measures of the new regime (inflation control, agrarian reform and industry rehabilitation) reaped good results. During the 1950s, The Chinese government carried out a rapid industrialization project based on centralized planning in the style of the Soviet Union.
With the first first five-year plan (1953-1957), the Government concentrated the investment in about 150 large industrial projects. The resources allocated to investment in the sector came from the state purchase of agricultural production from the peasantry. The purchase was made at a price regulated by the State and the peasants were forced to accept it. These goods were then reluctant and, with the difference, the State invested in industrial projects.
On the contrary, industrial consumer products were sold at relatively high prices, which, together with the low salaries paid to industry workers, allowed the government to have the necessary resources to invest in the heavy industry and improve the provision of public services (health and education).
The great social reform of the beginnings of popular China was the law of marriage of 1950. With it the feudal family was ended and the equality of women and men was established. It was one of the great contributions of the Maoist Revolution to the country.
Shortly after, Mao launched a new revolutionary campaign. After expressing his concern for the corruption of the communist bureaucracy, in 1956 he began The “hundred Flores campaign” and encouraged the intellectuals to discuss the country’s political and economic problems .
Mao considered that, in this way, the opposition thinkers would see the richness of socialism and how this system could end the problems of the country. However, the campaign was not successful. Opposition criticism urged the government to democratized and protested against PCCH control.
The dissemination of these criticisms alarmed Mao so much that he finally decided to censor the debate and suppress ideological dissidents. During the following years, more than 500,000 people were identified as “right -wing” and were humiliated, imprisoned or killed.
THE GREAT LEVEL AWARD
In 1958, Mao began a new economic policy, known as the “Great Leap forward.” This plan was aim accelerate the transition to communism and achieve industrialization and well -being of the population. It was mainly based on the collectivization of land and the forced relocation of the peasantry as an industrial labor.
The “great leap forward” was a failure and resulted in a serious economic and social crisis. Between 1960 and 1962, a succession of bad harvests aggravated by monetary inflation caused a huge famine, which led the lives of more than twenty million people.
The proletarian cultural revolution
The failure of the “Great Leap forward” plan made Mao relegated to a secondary role and the most moderate leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai, took their place in 1961. In that context, the direction of the party was going through a serious crisis.
To consolidate your power again, Mao launched a popular agitation campaign and sought army support led by Lin Biao. The campaign went against the bureaucracy of the party, which he accused of “revisionist” (that is, a deviation from the communist movement), and against intellectual dissent, to which he blamed individualism and liberalism.
His campaign sought the favor of the young people, who followed MAO’s call and grouped into militias known as the “red guards.” His only ideology was the “Red Book of Mao”, a book published in 1964 that summed up the ideas and sometimes the occurrences of the leader.
The figure of Mao, the “great helmsman”, began to be the object of a personality cult (similar to the one promoted by Stalin in the Soviet Union).
In November 1965 the “great proletarian cultural revolution began.” During the XI full of the Chinese Communist Party, in August 1966, Mao received the tribute of two million red guards in the Tian’anmen Square in Beijing. The “Cultural Revolution” (1966-1969) became a ruthless purge of the opposition to the communism of Mao, identified as the “five black categories”: landowners, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad influences and right-wing.
In the dome of the party, the main officials were separated (including Deng Xiaoping, who was China’s supreme leader after Mao’s death). Among the population, millions of people were persecuted and carried out the terrible massacres of Guangxi, Guangdong and Daxian, among other incidents. The struggles spread throughout the country and repression involved from public humiliations and arbitrary imprisonment until execution.
The “cultural revolution” ended up taking areas of the country to anarchy. Mao was finally forced to resort to the army and reimpose order. Although the social and economic consequences were critical, the political objective had been fulfilled: the moderates, who threatened the power of Mao, had been marginalized and, at the same time, the population had been avoided that the population criticized the multiple economic and social dysfunctions suffered by the country.
Mao’s succession
Mao’s death in 1976 triggered the struggle for power within the PCCH. Deng Xiaoping, veteran communist leader who represented the moderate faction (persecuted during the cultural revolution), resumed a dominant position in the game And he got the PCCH Congress in 1978 to adopt an economic reform policy and openness abroad, called “the policy of the four modernizations” (agriculture, industry, science and defense).
In turn, the moderate faction consolidated its power within the party. The senior Maoist radical officials were expelled and judged by the crimes and abuses that were carried out during the cultural revolution. These radical leaders were grouped into the “Band of the Four” (led by Jiang Qing, Mao’s widow) and sought to rebuild their power. However, in 1980, Jian Qing was stripped of all his positions and judged in a televised trial.
Parallel to the fallen in disgrace of the most extremist currents, many marginalized or retaliated leaders during the cultural revolution returned to power positions. The moderates organized under the direction of Deng Xiaoping. Its protected Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang were appointed, respectively, prime minister in 1980 and president of the PCCH in 1981 .
The first economic reform of Deng Xiaoping
In 1979, the Deng Xiaoping government began moderate reforms in the Chinese economy with the aim of achieving a gradual opening abroad. The economic plan included authorization under certain conditions of foreign capital entry, the increase in private production in the agricultural sector and the decentralization of industrial production.
During the 1980s, the reform intensified through the progressive replacement of centralization and state intervention by the free market. The positive results were immediate: the Chinese economy grew at an average annual rate of more than 7 % and the per capita product did it almost 6 %. This growth quickly resulted in the standard of living of important sectors of the population.
This economic growth was also based on one of the most positive inheritances of the communist regime. China, which in the thirties had 80 % illiterate, had 81 % of its literate population in 2001.
Social Reforms of Deng Xiaoping
When ascending to the government, Deng Xiaoping had to face the problem of growing overpopulation in China that, in turn, generated serious social and environmental consequences. The studies estimated that, if the growth rate of the moment, the Chinese population would reach two billion inhabitants in 2030.
Consequently, in 1979 the government decided to establish the “policy of the only child.” This policy limited parents to having a single child and was applied in urban areas.
Those who refused to comply with the norm, had to face economic and social fines, such as the impossibility of schooling their other children and social conviction for their behavior. In 2015 this policy was modified and a maximum of two children per couple was established.
The 1989 protests
In the spring of 1989, a series of student demonstrations began in Beijing. In parallel, criticism began to be heard from different sectors of society, against the Government of Deng Xiaoping, who was accused of preventing the adoption of liberalizing political reforms.
The protests massified and reached their peak in May and June. Thousands of people camped for days in the Tiananmén Square, to claim democracy and political freedoms.
Finally, the army cleared the square using tanks and machine guns. More than three thousand people died in the massacre. However, although the protesters failed to modify the political regime, they gave a boost to reforms that, in the long run, generated great economic growth.
- See also: Tiananmén massacre
China’s great economic expansion
During the 1990s, the Chinese government consolidated reforms oriented to economic liberalization. Without abandoning the communist planning system, state control was limited within companies, private production and consumption were encouraged and the income of foreign investments was further opened.
In addition, preferential economic zones were created around large cities to concentrate industrial development. In turn, the State invested infrastructure, public services and housing facilities for workers.
In the rural sector, it replaced the system of rural communes with the free organization of the usufruct and property. Since then, agrarian production could be administered and sold by the peasants. In 2007, private property was recognized, with the exception of the lands destined for certain crops that are still owned by the State.
Continue with:
- Chiang Kai Chek
- Cold War Blocks
- Sino-Soviet rupture
- Decolonization in Asia
References
- Cornejo, R. (2015). Towards the contemporary world. In Minimum history of China. The College of Mexico.
- Moreno, J. (1991). Contemporary China: 1916-1990. Isthmus editions.
- Tato, Mi, Bubello, JP, Castello, AM and Campos, E. (2011). History of the second half of the twentieth century. Estrada
