China s Economic Liberalization
China’s Economic Liberalization During the 20th century, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were the most influential leaders in China. These two important leaders, however, had different visions and approaches to rebuild China’s economy. Mao Zedong’s vision of the path to the future was socialism. He used ideological fervor to sustain economic development. His approaches on economic reforms involved political consciousness and often radical. Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, overrode Mao’s concept of economic equilibrium. He approached economic campaigns by advocating material incentives. Deng’s pragmatic openness to capitalistic innovations had changed China from an impoverished isolated country to a fast developing open nation. Under Mao’s era, from 1949 to 1976, the Chinese economy was stagnated. Mao’s economic goals were not mainly focusing on the modernization of the China’s agricultural-based economy; instead he tried to inculcate Chinese society with the ideologies of communism through economic campaigns. ... First of all, Mao called for the establishment of people’s communes on which Chinese life and labor would be completely controlled and militarized. Secondly, he called upon every man, woman, and child in China to help increasing and speeding up China’s industrial and agricultural output. ... Once there was a campaign to raise the output of iron and steel, during which people all over China built small furnaces in their work units. ... People’s daily use tools and cooking pans were all destroyed. ... Great Leap Forward had a great impact on the economic development. ... Many people died from starvation especially when natural disasters hit China in 1960. ... Other countries did not recognize Mao’s regime at that time. ... It began with confident prediction that China would “surpass Great Britain’s industry in 15 years and surpass Soviet in the transition from socialism to communism at the same time” (Video, The Mao Years: Catch the Stars and Moon). ... Compare the economic goals of Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, Deng’s economic goal was mainly focusing on the modernization of China’s economy.