Chinese History · Chronicle X of X
中華人民共和國 · PRC
Mao and Deng, the Cultural Revolution and reform: the making of modern China.
The Founding of the PRCPolitical
On 1 October 1949 Mao Zedong stands atop Tiananmen and declares that the Chinese people have stood up.
The proclamation of the People's Republic ended decades of war and division and began the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Mao's government set about land reform, the nationalization of industry, and the building of a one-party socialist state, allied at first with the Soviet Union.
The Mao EraPolitical
Mao's drive to industrialize overnight through rural communes ends in the deadliest famine in human history.
The Great Leap Forward herded peasants into vast communes and set them to make steel in backyard furnaces. Wildly unrealistic targets, falsified reports and the collapse of farming brought famine on a catastrophic scale; tens of millions died between 1959 and 1961. It was the worst disaster of Mao's rule.
(2).jpg?width=1024)
The Cultural RevolutionPolitical
Mao unleashes the Red Guards against the party and society, plunging China into a decade of upheaval.
To reassert his authority and purge his rivals, Mao called on the young to rebel against the 'four olds' and against authority itself. The Red Guards persecuted teachers, officials and intellectuals, destroyed cultural treasures, and threw the country into chaos and violence until Mao's death in 1976 finally brought the movement to an end.
The Cultural RevolutionPolitical
President Nixon's visit reopens relations with the United States, realigning the balance of the Cold War.
After a bitter split with the Soviet Union, Mao and Zhou Enlai received President Nixon in Beijing in 1972 — an astonishing reversal that opened China to the West. Within the decade the People's Republic took China's seat at the United Nations and won recognition from most of the world.
Reform and OpeningPolitical
Deng Xiaoping launches market reforms that will lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and remake China.
Emerging as paramount leader after Mao, Deng dismantled the communes, welcomed private enterprise and foreign investment, and opened special economic zones such as Shenzhen. His pragmatic 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' unleashed the fastest sustained economic growth in world history.
.jpg?width=1024)
Reform and OpeningPolitical
Mass demonstrations for reform in Beijing end when the government declares martial law and clears the square by force.
In the spring of 1989 students and workers gathered in Tiananmen Square to call for political reform and an end to corruption. After weeks of protest the leadership declared martial law, and on 3–4 June the army moved in, with heavy loss of life. The crackdown ended hopes of political liberalization even as economic reform continued.
The Rise of ChinaEvent
China's entry into the WTO seals its place as the workshop of the world and an emerging economic superpower.
Joining the WTO in 2001 bound China ever tighter to the global economy. Exports surged, cities swelled, and hundreds of millions moved from countryside to factory. Within a decade China overtook Japan as the world's second-largest economy, and its skyline — from Shanghai's Pudong to a hundred new metropolises — announced a transformed nation.
The Rise of ChinaCultural
China stages a dazzling Olympic Games, announcing its arrival as a confident world power.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics, opening on the eighth day of the eighth month, were a spectacle of national pride and organizational might. Coming as the West entered a financial crisis, they symbolized a shift in the balance of the world, with China increasingly central to the global economy and to world affairs.
The Rise of ChinaPolitical
Xi Jinping consolidates power and launches the Belt and Road Initiative, extending China's reach across the globe.
Becoming leader in 2012–13, Xi Jinping centralized authority to a degree unseen since Mao and set out a vision of national rejuvenation. His Belt and Road Initiative financed infrastructure across Asia, Africa and Europe, while at home the party tightened its control — marking China's confident return to the front rank of world powers.
1 more entry, to 2013
