CHINA SINCE MAO

1976 TO THE PRESENT

THE COMMUNIST PARTY AFTER MAO
• death of Mao in 1976, Hua Guofeng took over as head of the Communist party
• Chinese Communist party turned away from class struggle and made economic growth a top
priority
• Gradually the intrusion of the government into daily life abated – more freely life
• the government permit increased market activity and private enterprise, and it began courting
foreign investment and sending students abroad.
• the spread of technologies like telephones, shortwave radios, satellite television, telephones,
fax machines, and the Internet - the infiltration of Western popular culture and political ideas -
the government was troubled
• Big economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s are very impressive, but not everyone has
benefited equally - people in cities have gained more than those in the countryside, those in the
coastal provinces more than those in the interior, and those entering the job market during
these decades more than their parents and grandparents
Hua Guofeng Deng Xiaoping
THE COMMUNIST PARTY AFTER MAO
• „Gang of four“: Jiang Qing (Mao Zedong's last wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang
Hongwen
• 1977, Deng Xiaoping was reappointed to his old posts, and in December 1978 he supplanted
Hua as the top official - “poverty is not socialism”
• A pragmatist with a catchword “the Four Modernizations” (of agriculture, industry, science
and technology, and defense).
• Importance on education, media, economy - Special Economic Zone was created at Shenzhen
• Many foreign visitors; Western teachers were brought to China to teach English and other
foreign languages
• Christian churches reopened, as did Buddhist and Daoist temples.
• “spiritual pollution” – not happy with rapid change and Western influence
• Extensive corruption
Jiang Qing, Madame Mao, at her trial in
1980
The gang of four
 Late Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping (right) and Chen Yun at the
Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978.
Deng Xiaoping's 1979 visit to the United States
RESTRUCTURING THE ECONOMY
• 1947–1971, the economy grew rapidly every year, sometimes at more than 10 percent
• the countryside the most important reform was the dismantling of collective agriculture; a
“responsibility system” - rural households bid for land and other assets that they could treat as
their own and provide specified crops
• abandoned Mao’s insistence on self-sufficiency and began courting foreign investors. Special
Economic Zones were created - incentives to foreign firms, including low taxes, new plants, and
a well-trained but cheap labor force
• legal system more into line with international standards - Foreign manufacturers were
attracted to the low labor costs in China, set up factories to produce goods for the Chinese
market (such as vehicles) and contracted with Chinese manufacturers to produce consumer
goods for Western markets (such as clothing, toys, watches, and computers).
• Shrinking the State Sector but lots of unemployed and loosing job, under pressure to become
profitable
RESTRUCTURING THE ECONOMY
• Regional Disparities - most of the industrial growth was in the coastal provinces, regional
inequalities increased; regions far from good roads, remain extremely poor
• Internal Migration – migration to the cities
• Environmental Degradation - were encouraged to harness nature to increase production;
• little thought was given to the ecological consequences of terracing mountains, plowing
grasslands, reclaiming wetlands, damming rivers, or killing all the sparrows – the results: soil
erosion, desertification, and massive flooding; in 1998 seven of the ten most polluted cities in
the world were in China;
• in late decade Environmental activism is growing in China
• Consumer Culture - In the early 1980s not yet much to buy; 1990s people could afford
Chinese bought TVs, stereos, clothes, furniture, air conditioners, and washing machines;
Shopping streets of major cities abounded in stores well stocked; development also in the
countryside
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES
• Education - during the Cultural Revolution had deteriorated - more important to be red
than to be expert;
• in 1977 with the reinstitution of college entrance examinations - could also apply to study
abroad in Europe, the United States, or Japan - led to a craze for studying foreign languages.
• Disparity between cities and in the countryside seemed to grow – parentsa had to pay for
teachers
• Arts - During the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals learned to keep quiet, and ordinary
people were fed a dull and repetitious diet of highly politicized stories, plays, and films.
• the downfall of the Gang of Four, more varied and lively cultural expression
• much livelier media, with everything from investigative reporters exposing corruption of
cadres, to philosophers who tried to reexamine the premises of Marxism, to novelists, poets,
and filmmakers who experimented with previously taboo treatments of sexuality.
• Television as a cultural force expanded enormously, stricted the showing of foreign films in
theaters, but people still saw them on VCRs or DVD, Western music of all sorts found fans
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGES
• Gender roles - in the 1920s - equality for women, women were eligible to join the party on the same
terms as men; later women had the right to initiate divorce
• After 1949 official rhetoric encouraged people to think of men and women as equal -women were
mobilized to participate in farm work, and more girls enrolled in schools.
• Girls and women were certainly more visible outside their homes than their counterparts had been in
the nineteenth century, but men still occupied most positions of power and the better-paid jobs.
• Population control – in 80s population growth accelerated; Since the late 1970s, the government has
worked hard to promote the one-child family in the cities and the one- or two-child family in the
countryside;
• the 1990s, the campaign was relaxed a little, making it easier for families with only daughters to try again
for a son
• The preference for boys remains so strong that China faces a shortage of young women in coming
decades
• Family life - changing gender roles and population control policies have had an impact on family
organization and family dynamics - ancestor worship, lineages, and solidarity with patrilineal kin were
all discouraged as feudal practices; the authority of family heads declined; the family became less central
in their lives; coerced marriages became less common, and in the cities at least, people did choose their
own spouses
CRITICAL VOICES
• people found ways to express political criticism
• on Democracy Wall in Beijing in the fall of 1978 - blue-collar
workers with high school educations
• Wei Jingshen - “fifth modernization” - 1979 he had been
arrested and Democracy Wall shut down; he was exiled to the
United States in 1997.
• In 1986 the physicist Fang Lizhi told students that the socialist
movement “from Marx and Lenin to Stalin and Mao Zedong, has
been a failure” and advocated adopting the Western political
system.
• Student protests for demanded greater freedom, less corruption,
and better living conditions in their dormitories - Tiananmen
• the political potential of a school of Qigong teachings - Li
Hongzhi, developed Falun Gong, a form of Qigong that drew on
both Buddhist and Daoist ideas and promised practitioners good
health and other benefits
 The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China held in December 1978 paved the way
to China’s reform and opening-up in the 40 years that followed.

The Luohu Port in Shenzhen in 1990.

 TIANANMEN SQUARE
• political unrest at several universities in 1986
• 1989 June Fourth Incident - the popular national
movement inspired by the Beijing protests during that
period - the '89 Democracy Movement
• forcibly suppressed after the government declared martial
law and sent in the military to occupy central parts of
Beijing.
• Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles
and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the
military's advance towards Tiananmen Square. Estimates of
the death toll vary from several hundred to thousands.

A photo of Pu Zhiqiang, a student protester at

Tiananmen, taken on 10 May 1989. These Chinese words
written on the paper say, " We want freedom of
newspapers, freedom of associations, also to support the
‚World Economic Herald‘, and support those just
journalists."
TAIWAN
• In 1949, after the victory of the Communist party in the civil war Chiang Kaishek and large
parts of the Nationalist government and army evacuated to the island of Taiwan
• Taiwan had been under Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945 and since then returned to
Chinese
• The initial encounter between the local population and the Nationalist government had
been hostile with protests against the corruption of its politicians - with shooting at
protesters and pursuing suspected leaders, killing, it is estimated, eight thousand to ten
thousand people, including many local leaders
• son Chiang Chingkuo (Jiang Jingguo) in the late 1980s - Taiwan succeeded in making the
transition from one-party rule to parliamentary democracy
• During the 1950s and 1960s, the United States treated Chiang’s Republic of China as the
legitimate government of China and insisted that it occupy China’s seat at the United
Nations.
• in the 1970s, Taiwan’s position became anomalous - the United States and the PRC agreed
that there was only one China and that Taiwan was a part of China.
CHINA IN THE WORLD
• After Mao’s death contacts with the world were re-established
• In the 1970s it supported the murderous Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia and was
incensed when Vietnam invaded Cambodia.
• In the 1980s, China worked to improve its relationship with Western countries, partly to reduce
the threat from the Soviet Union.
• In 1984, the British government agreed to return Hong Kong to China when the ninety-nine-year
lease on the New Territories expired in 1997.
• In the 1990s, to help expand its economy, China joined the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank
• In 2001, China was admitted to the World Trade Organization.
• Some setbacks occurred in the next few years, such as the SARS epidemic and scandals about
tainted food, medicine, and toys
• 2008 Olympics were held in Beijing - showcase how it has been transformed in the last three
decades
CHINA TODAY
• more modernized and developed
• Knowledge of the outside world is much more extensive.
• Inequalities are also more extreme: some Chinese have grown fabulously wealthy, while others
have not been able to find work or cannot afford to send their children to school or to pay for
medical care.
• The party is no longer as dominated by a single person as forms of collective leadership have
been developed, and leaders now can rise as much because of their technical expertise as their
political fervor.
• However the Communist party still dominates the government and has its hands in much of
what goes on in the country.
• The Chinese state does not interfere in everyday affairs to the extent it used to, but it still has
tremendous coercive force.
• http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/english/
Xi Jinping
 The 2017 China Rendezvous, an exhibition of
yachts, aviation and luxury lifestyle, opens in
Sanya, Hainan Province, on December 8, 2017.

The Beijing Olympic Games opens in the National

Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest, at 8 pm on August 8,
2008.