Taking a look at Transformations in China

China is the second largest economy in the world. It has become the fastest growing economy in the world with an average rate of 10% for the last thirty years. The largest exporter and second largest importer of goods has brought China to be ranked first in the foreign exchange reserves. The country with thousands of years of history, started off and continues today as mostly an agrarian economy. Over time China's economy continues to change and prosper. Starting with the first economic change in the early twentieth century, which occurred when the GMD (the Nationalist Party) lost control due to its poor economic performance. This in turn led to their defeat by the CCP. During that time many peasants lost their farmland and this led to a peasant

China has changed in certain ways and remained the same in others from the early Golden Ages to the late 1900s. China has experienced a series of cultural and political transformations, shaping the lives of many Chinese citizens. Culturally, the country’s art and literature hardly changed for almost eight hundred years. Along with their culture, China remained politically the same from the beginning of the Golden Ages all the way until the 1800s. On the other hand, China’s government and society were restructured after new leaders took over. From a monarch to total communism, China’s society had a multitude of new ideas and policies they had to adapt to.

Tracing back the history of China, Xia Dynasty of the second millennium BCE was the earliest dynasty in China, which was centered along the Yellow River. Before China was unified, it was the time during which most of China's cultural tradition arose. Chinese civilization ascended and developed in a vast area, one-third larger than the United States if such dependencies as Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Tibet are included. For centuries China was almost completely isolated from the other centers of civilization by mountains, deserts, and seas. This isolation helps explain the great originality of China's culture. China has many mountain ranges and three river systems that rise close together on the high Tibetan plateau and flow eastward to

Since the market orientated economic reforms were introduced in 1978 (Khan, Hu (1997, P103) China’s economy has seen a 10% increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Per year (Vincellete, Manoel,

For the last several decades China and Japan have both risen as superpowers and dominated the Pacific. Japan during the 1980s had the “economic miracle”, however it had a recession in the 1990s that set Japan back. As China becomes a rising superpower due to growing populations and cheap labor and, while Japan remains a “fragile superpower” because of the lack of resources and ageing population both nations will continue to grow, or will China become another fallen communist nation and will the tiger of the Pacific come to a roaring halt? Ever since the Four Humiliations in 1839 China was in desperate need to modernize and change many aspects of its government if it wanted to keep up with the ever-changing world.

Mao Zedong, the leader of China during the third quarter of the 20th century, organized two movements in his country in an attempt to develop China 's economy through the establishment of communism. Through The Great Leap Forward, Mao planned to change the layout of the Chinese economy by forcing collectivism on his country and implementing other ways to speed up production. Since this movement failed, he then implemented The Cultural Revolution. It consisted of the same goals but was carried out through violence and was also an utter failure. These two movements failed because of the lack of organization with which they were performed. This lack of organization manifested itself in a number of different ways. The government did not care about their people, the reforms themselves were not planned out in detail, the government did not think about the spontaneity of young people, they did not consider the effect violence would have on their country, they did not realize the decline in education that would result from the participation of students in the revolution, they did not plan well economically, they did not examine the negative effects of communes, and they did not foresee the large number of deaths that would plague their country. Although designed to rapidly increase China 's economic growth through communism, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had the opposite effects and significantly diminished China 's economy. The two direct causes of the failure

Since the implementation of the "reform and opening-up" policy in 1978, China's economy has been undergoing a rapid and healthy development. Over the past 27 years, China's annual GDP growth has averaged 9.4 per cent, more than doubled that of the world as well as more than two folds that of the developed nations over the same period. In 2004, China's GDP reached USD1650billion, an increase of 9.5 per cent over 2003.(The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Australia, June 2005)

I"It matters not whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." Deng Xiaoping

But some of the promises made to the people were fulfilled. In a few short years Chinese peasants were moved from their small plots of land into large communes and cooperatives. On these communes very had enough to eat, everyone shared the work, and there was a real sense of community.

In the book China: A Nation in Transition, many topics are covered, including the one-child policy, religious ceremonies, and most importantly, women's rights and emancipation. In the chapter Chinese Communism and Emancipation of Women, the reader learns about various issues China has with gender inequality between men and women along with quickly growing campaigns and efforts in the pursuit of equal rights. For example, this chapter covers what rulers have done in order to help women , like when the young Mao Zedong added women studying abroad to his socialist society, along with pointing out some discrepancies between men and women, like passing the Health Care and Labor Organizations law creating limitations on jobs women can perform. On

In the written piece composed by Hongjie Wang, “Hot Peppers, Sichuan Cuisine and the Revolutions in Modern China” a variety of elements inclusive of the correlation between the spicy predilection and innovative characters present in the Chinese culture are discussed with consideration of the key elements of big history. In “Hot Peppers, Sichuan Cuisine and the Revolutions in Modern China”, Hongjie Wang discusses the Big History of the Sichuan cuisine. In this discussion, the argues that the cuisine isn’t that hot, indicating this as a myth, as the spice was abandoned after the 16th century and then replaced by newly introduced peppers until today. Wang notes when the hot peppers made Sichuan cuisine spicy through giving an overview of the trade

Feeling this was not enough to boost the economic up, Deng loaned money from IMF and the World Bank “to upgrade machinery and establish new manufacturing and industrial development” (Benson, 48). He opened a total of five towns and villages as SEZs and allowed foreign investors to build factories and hire Chinese to work for them. It might not be the best way to reform the economic as a whole, but it played an important role because it benefited the Chinese workers, the investors, and the Chinese government. During the 1980s, Deng promoted the “open door” policy to encourage foreign investment and to trade with the world. China needed larger quantities of raw materials to fuel its industrial growth so they signed contracts for minerals, timer, and so forth. It had not only provided China with raw materials that were needed, but also improved the relations with other neighbor counties and the US.

1900s China saw a century of fluctuating development and progress, which is recognised through various political, economic and social changes. The early division of the period encountered some change for the country yet this was not as significant as the latter change in which China’s political landscape metamorphosed into one of total contrast to the former. Foreign intervention was of course a reason and usually the root cause for the changes that occurred, particularly in the first half of the century until 1962 whereby there were still some minor influences by the foreigners but other factors seemed to have caused these later changes. It could be deduced that yes, foreign powers did have a significant influence over the transformation

The reforms took place largely in rural China. There was increased emphasis and investment on consumer

In accordance to this, China went on a construction binge. Whole factories were purchased from abroad while others were built with local resources. By 1978, the frenzy for new projects reached a level that reminded some people of the Great Leap Forward. In an effort to promote agricultural production, the government released many of the restrictions on the 'spontaneous capitalist tendencies' of the peasantry. (173) In the late 1980's, the government decided to expand the scope of private marketing. The next step was to increase the amount land assigned to the peasants. The peasants were now not responsible to the government for the use they made to the private plots. They simply could grow what they wished, for the sale to the government or to private markets. This led to furious rebuilding and inflow of foreign investments. All this enabled China to remake itself into Asian's hub of finance, trade and culture.