China's Survival of Crisis Due to Economic Reforms

China's Survival of Crisis Due to Economic Reforms

In the years before 1976, many unwise policies were carried out which

brought China into a crisis of communism, or a state in which

communism was threatened. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural

Revolution were specifically the main causes of the crisis of

communism and the mastermind between these two movements, Mao Zedong,

can be held responsible for their initiation. The Great Leap Forward

was a great economic failure. Years of famine and intense suffering

came about as a result of this skewed project of Mao's. Consequently,

he was sidelined in the CCP. The direct consequence of this was the

Cultural Revolution, as he sought to regain his lost prestige and

power in the CCP in his attempts to remove his political rivals the

liuists or the pragmatists from power. The Cultural Revolution that

took place in the years from 1966-1976 had done great harm to the

country and its impact was felt economically and socially. The

Cultural Revolution was marked by ten years of chaos and violence

which took their toll on the youth of China, who missed out on

valuable years of their education due to the mayhem which took place.

The repercussions from this bulwark to education are still being felt

in China to this day. Needless to say, the unrestrained persecution

carried out under Mao's instructions resulted in great loss of life

and property. "The Cultural Revolution turned out to be anti-cultural,

anti-intellectual, and anti-scientific, for knowledge was considered

the source of reactionary and bourgeois thought and action".[1] Also,

the party was decimated as many who were suspected of oppo...

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crisis of communism. No political reform was initiated by him but this

was the very reason why communism remained intact in China, whilst it

was obliterated elsewhere.

Bibliography

1) Democracy Wall Movement,

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~asiactr/haq/199903/9903a007.htm

2) The Deng Xiaoping Reference Archive,http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping

3) Hsu, Immanuel, The Rise of Modern China, Sixth Edition, Oxford

University Press, 2000.

4) Sanders, Richard, From Command to the Market: The Chinese

Experience, Business Update 4 March 2000

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[1] Hsu, Immanuel, The Rise of Modern China, Sixth Edition

[2] Sanders, Richard, From Command to the Market: The Chinese

Experience, Business Update 4 March 2000, pg 5.