China And Its Impact On Chinese Citizens

Although, China is a great economical world power today, it is not due to The Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was a giant step backward and is considered the worst famine in human history with an “estimated 30 million people perished between 1959 and 1962”. The overwhelming desire to industrialize backfired, but became the beginning of human rights abuse caused by harsh labor conditions. In order to fund industrial programs, “the Party would use profits from the agricultural sector, therefore the first priority was to increase agricultural output. That in turn, meant full-fledged mechanization.” To achieve full-fledged mechanization, thousands of male peasants were transferred to industrial work. They left the farm work for the women and the children. For example, in 1958 “the [Henan] province allocated 1.604 billion yuan to construction projects” and Wu Zhipu, the Chinese Communist Party governor of Henan, “crowed that ‘by the end of August, the province will have built or expanded 378,000 factories and mines of all kinds,’” which proved to be true when “workers employed in the province’s state-owned enterprises more than doubled in number from 1957.” These workers were not only starved due to the mass starvation, but ridiculed with harsh government policies. “Anyone who aroused the wrath of a leader could be

China has reached a milestone in terms of achieving its centenarian goal of making China a prosperous nation once again. One of the ways that it has done this is by having steady economic growth even in the midst of an economic crisis. Not only has China’s economy grown, but its standard of living has also improved, it has achieved this by spending 70 percent of its fiscal revenue towards improving people’s standard of living. China has also pushed more anti-corruption reforms and has made efforts towards widening its economy by setting up freer trade.

During Mao’s time, he strongly stressed his principles of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution”. However, due to these philosophies, China’s economic and social foundations crumbled and was severely damaged. The country was severely poor and economic production slowed. After Mao passed away, Deng Xiaoping emerged as Mao’s successor. He launched comprehensive economic reforms. These reforms aimed to decrease the role of the state in the economy and gradually introduce private forms of production in agriculture and industry. Because of these reforms, production increased by leaps and bounds and poverty was reduced dramatically. However, there was a problem that was arising. There was a lot of corruption and nepotism that was beginning to take over the economy. The gap between the wealthy and poor was growing and people began to see it as unfair.

For the past century, Chinese society has felt a compulsive desire to develop at breakneck speeds. In pursuing development, China’s primary goal has been to display its sophistication to the world, rather than to directly aid the welfare of its citizens. Following this hierarchy of objectives, China has continued to relentlessly modernize despite enormous negative consequences; the development powered through famine during the Great Leap Forward, violence during the Cultural Revolution, and economic dislocation during liberalization, accepting negative consequences as bearable burdens on the path to global renown. Ignoring these issues, China has proven itself more responsive to international views of modernity than to immediate national

China is a growing country; its population is about 1.4 billion, and as of 2014, the Chinese economy is the world’s second largest (in terms of nominal GDP,) totaling approximately US$10.380 trillion, with a growth rate of 7.4%, and the GDP per capita is US$3,619.4. From last century to this century, China has had significant improvements in their economic development. China had been in three major crises during the last century: the 20th century. The Fall of Qing Dynasty, World War II, and Civil War in China, all of them struck China in a destructive way. From the end of the 20th century, China was in a fast-developing mode.

Charles Darwin in his theory of natural selection said “ the fittest of the fittest will survive,” and year after year China has proven they are the fittest by climbing the economic ladder, as Mark Schwartz Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs and Chairman of Golden Sachs Asia Pacific, claims in his speech “China’s Economic Success and Opportunities,” “China is coming out of a period of rapid growth almost ten percent over the last thirty (30) years. In 2013 China’s gross domestic product (GDP) was 9.3 trillion dollars in size the second largest economy on the world and in 2013 China contributed 28% GDP to the world growth globally” (Schwartz). Was this growth due to rapid industrialization or the implementation of polices using Marxist and Keynesian perspectives or was it the authoritarian regime? However, it is China’s collectivist approach towards socialism that is responsible for their recent success.

China’s backwardness was caused by its labor-intensive system as well as its attitude toward globalization. Because of the labor-intensive industries, China lacked the experience of

Over the last few decades while China’s population growth rate has decreased, its GDP has increased. “China’s GDP per capita for the period 1952 to 2008 grew at an average annual rate of 5.58%.” (Yao) Furthermore, during the same time

The successes are named as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Malaysia and Thailand are considered to be moderately performing, but lagging behind. Finally, he classifies the Philippines and Indonesia as failures. The final section of the book is solely dedicated to China as it presents a unique case. China has developmental characteristics that are similar to both the successful countries of Northeast Asia as well as the poorer Southeastern Asian countries. China has made great progresses and overcome great disasters. It has worked closely alongside the World Bank and even receives technical support from it when needed. But not without paranoia, which has actually caused China to prosper. Unlike the northeastern countries, Chinese peasants do not own their own land as it is collectively owned and is not allowed to be sold under law. In modern times, China’s developmental plan is based off of recognizing the past failures associated with state-led growth, while allowing state companies to play an important role in its economy. Also, foreign owned companies play a large role because other countries outsource their labor needs to China because it is much cheaper. Overall, Studwell states that China’s government has set the stage for the enablement of rapid economic development. The author

Moreover, after setting up economic institutions and an industrial base, Deng Xiaoping established various Special Economic Zones in China that allowed for increased foreign investment, helping to develop China’s commercial growth. As described before, when Deng Xiaoping came to power, his goal was for China to fulfill the Four Modernizations: modernization in agriculture; industry; science and technology; and defense. Deng believed that the only way China could keep up with Western countries was if China achieved the Four Modernizations. Specifically, in order to achieve the Four Modernizations, Deng had to fulfill a two-step goal. The first stage was to build up economic institutions and to set up a strong industrial base, both of which had been denied to China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The second stage of the Four Modernizations was China’s emergence from isolation and integration into the global economy, both of which were crucial for China’s commercial economy to develop. Deng Xiaoping’s biggest accomplishment was his achievement of this second goal. Specifically, the period of time when Deng reformed and opened up China to the world is known as 改革开放, which is pronounced Gaige Kaifang. What separated Deng Xiaoping from other leaders in the past was that Deng’s method of thinking was very pragmatic. He recognized Mao as a hero to modern China, but also believed that some of Mao’s policies were wrong. Deng’s famous quote was: “黑猫白猫抓住老鼠就是好猫,” which translates to

. In the contemporary scheme of things China makes up for roughly 11% of the world’s exports, an amazing feat for a country that practiced an isolation policy and communism only forty years prior. Additionally, China with a large-scale allocation of funds to improve poverty ratings has successfully brought four hundred million people out of poverty, into a lower-middle class. Now, while still competing with Japan for Asian hegemony, China enjoys a great deal more security and prosperity through its transformation from a failing communist state to a wealthy hyper-capitalist state. Through capitalistic economic reforms, an export led economy, and efficient one-party, authoritarian politics China has been able to bounce back from three decades

What these reforms have done to China are incredible. During 1978-1994, the annual GNP growth rate averaged about 10 percent, which during that same time period was far higher than the world average of 3 percent . However, over the past five years has experienced slow growth rate in the economy. Some economists contest that China’s first two decades of reforms reflected a“catch-up” growth period, and that the country has now “run out of easy things to reform” (Henderson pg.

The changes in China’s economy can be traced to between 1976 to 1978, when the Cultural Revolution had effectively ended and widespread social, economic, and political conflict that accompanied it. The Culture Revolution was motivated in large part by revolution ideology and an attempt to purge the state of its “liberal bourgeoisie” elements, hence the forced reeducation and relocation from the cities to rural areas of millions of Chinese citizens . As the havoc wrought by the Cultural Revolution dissipated, China’s leaders focused on the goal of enriching their impoverished nation. The nation had been paralyzed economically by the chaos that had ensued . While there was agreement among China’s political leaders regarding the need for economic change, the road forward for the nation was unclear.

Thailand is an area that sits in the heartland of mainland Southeast Asia. The climate has a great diversity with mountains in the north, rivers and tributaries drain into the Gulf of Thailand. The country is divided into four main zones and the population is relatively homogenous. The background of the special economic zone is not another idea for Asia. There were a couple of past endeavors drove by developing Asian economies a couple of decades ago including Tiger East Asian Miracles and India in receiving and executing this idea as an open door for industries. In any case, it appears that China is depicted as a capable country with the right systems set up to build up and convey this idea effectively. As China is not the main nation to

Zhiwu Chen, a professor of Finance at Yale School of Management, had once addressed two pivotal questions to the world: “Why has China’s economy grown at such a fast rate during the last 30 years, and is this growth rate sustainable?” Over the past decades, China’s uprising as a huge economy power was undeniably prominent, first in Asia and then to the eyes of the world. The most popular answer as the world knows it is because China has “vast and cheap labors”, but that is not necessarily true. The idea of China’s development has been supported not only by huge labor force. Instead, it was also driven by all the changes that happen in the world, which allowed China to gain from its labor force, and also