China 's Sudden Growth And Rise Of A Economic Superpower

China remains a current world super power that has been around for thousands of years. It was one of the first civilizations ever created and it has evolved into an enormous country. China is a large territory, but only 10% of the land can be farmed on. This continues to be a tremendous problem, especially with the large population that mostly lives in rural areas. In the past China was seen as a fragile nation that was still stuck in the past, although after the Four Humiliations this began to change. The Four Humiliations were a group of events that forced China to modernize due to the losses it faced. After the last of the four humiliations and the fall of the dynasty era during 1911, China began to catch up to the westernized world by modernizing their government, military, and education. The Chinese

Since the reform and opening up, the economy of China grows significantly, as an emerging economy, China's economy has made tremendous contributions to the global economy, and Renminbi has become one of the most important currency in the world. According to the survey conducted by China National Bureau of Statistics found that from 1979 to 2012, China has attained an annual average growth rate of 9.8% for its national economy, while the annual average growth of the world economy is only 2.8 % during the same period. In past 30 years, China's GDP surpassed Japan’s, China became the world 's second largest economy, in addition, the huge total volume of trade makes China become the world 's largest trading nation. The contribution of China’s

* From planned economy to free market powerhouse: The post - Mao era ( 1976 onwards )

China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a

In correlation to Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China shadowed through the darkness of an intensive economic crisis, generally referred to as, ‘The great leap forward’. The campaign lasted over a decade despite the catastrophic events that made China and its economy go downhill. Although Mao’s efforts were too colossal to go unnoticed, the monstrosity of a decade lead Mao to slowly fade in the background. Consequently, Zedong’s acquaintances, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shao-chi, rose to power to rectify the situation. Deng and Liu’s attempts to restore China – after the period of the great leap forward - may have been an optimistic road for the two officials. However, for Mao Zedong, it was far from the ideologies he obtained from the very beginning. Mao’s return in 1966 was merely to enforce his socialist principles, underpinning the Cultural Revolution.

The rise in China from a poor, stagnant country to a major economic power within a time span of twenty-eight years is often described by analysts as one of the greatest success stories in these present times. With China receiving an increase in the amount of trade business from many countries around the world, they may soon be a major competitor to surpass the U.S. China became the second largest economy, last year, overtaking Japan which had held that position since 1968 (Gallup). China could become the world’s largest economy in decades.

After breaking away from a temporary alliance with the KMT during the war with Japan (1937-1945), civil war broke out between the Communist Party and the KMT; resulting in the Communist Parties victory. This lead to the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Mao Zedong along with other Communist leaders set out to remodel China with his campaign of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ through “mass mobilisation of labour to improve agricultural and industrial production”, eventually transforming China into an industrial superpower that would surpass Western countries within fifteen years. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ model was borrowed from the model used by Joseph Stalin in the USSR of an “enterprise that was evaluated on the basis of ‘success indicators’… items produced, quantity of labour used and amount of raw materials depleted”. Mao wanted to adapt the ‘Stalin Model’ of controlled planting and production with the Asian idea of ‘collectivisation’ in mind, ultimately creating China into a self-sufficient industrial nation.

The China Boom: Why China Will Not Rule the World, by Ho-fung Hung. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016.

For many years, China’s economy ran and was fueled by agriculture, but that all changed with the struggle of power. In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC). Mao Zedong, the Party’s leader, decided to steer away the country from agriculture and pursued the development of heavy industry as a means to submerged the country in a self-contained industrial economy (O’neil pg. 391). Due to the Korean War and Taiwan’s Nationalist Party’s confrontation with China, Self-containment was became very important (Lecture).

During the 20th century China underwent a massive transformation. In the early 1900s China was a mass of land lacking any real political cohesion and so was plagued by disputes between the many ruling warlords. However, by the year 2000 China was considered a major contender on the world stage and still is today; it almost seems certain that China will become the most powerful nation on earth in the next 50 years. This major transformation is seen to be a great success of China, considering the relatively short amount of time in which it was accomplished, but the question still remains as to whether entire credit should be given to China

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.

For many years China has been the leading economic power in the world, even surpassing the United States. Recently, the country has been hanging onto that title despite its weakening economy. China’s economic growth has been declining due to job losses and lack of manufacturing. However, there have been numerous attempts to fix this problem. According to an article in the New York Times, China has created a new world bank — despite skepticism about that idea by other nations including the United States – in order to maintain its global and free economy. China has been trying to maintain a free economy, an idea that would not have worked or even been conceivable during the time China was a communist state. There were many attempts to try

In the current anarchic world, The United States acts as the global hegemon. However, China’s recent rise to power has lead international relations experts, Ikenberry, Mearsheimer, Subramanian, and Friedberg, to predict an upcoming power shift in the international system. China’s increasing control over the Asia-Pacific region has threatened U.S. power. According to Waltz, the realism paradigm interprets the anarchic structure of the international community, as a constant power struggle. Although each country may be different, to survive, they must all strive for power. Under the liberalism paradigm, the system is still anarchical but cooperation may be achieved by shared norms, and aligned political and economical interests.

China has achieved brisk economic growth since late 1970’s, with an average annual growth rate of 9.8% over the past 27 years. Such economic growth owes not only to economic reform began at the end of 1978, when the third session of the Central Committee of the 11th National Congress of Chinese Communist Party was held and later regarded as a landmark in the existing Chinese history, but also to administrative reform accompanying with economic reform.

The Chinese are an extremely clever people and unlike the old USSR, saw that communism failed everywhere it was tried. They therefore changed their economy to a capitalist one, but kept the communist party leadership. Those who think a revolution is in the offing fail to realize that every person in China might not love the system they live under, but would fight to the death to defend it. No anti-war protests here, they’d lose 500 million and not even blink – and if it ever comes to it, they will.