Reform in China and Russia

In 1989, two historic events took place that would come to shape world politics. The People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union were the two most populous and powerful communist powers on the globe. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall in East Germany was torn down. This wall was a symbol of communism's hold on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Its fall marked the end of the hegemony of the Soviet Union. By 1991, the Soviet Union was replaced with the democratic Russian Federation. In June 1989, tens of thousands of protestors flooded into Tiananmen Square in Beijing. These students were demanding more rights in the communist People's Republic of China. The communist leaders violently crushed the demonstrators by sending in tanks. Two dramatically different approaches towards demands for reform. China reformed at a slow pace that kept intact their political structure while transforming their economic system. Whereas the Soviet Union attempted to reform both politically and economically at a rapid pace and the country collapsed.

By the end of the 1980s, both the Soviet Union and China were experiencing domestic unrest. In China, frustration with the leaders of the country would cause the most civil unrest seen in that nation since the death of Mao. Reform was anathema to the octogenarians who led China. Deng Xiaoping lead China from 1978 until his death in the 1990s, though he never held any of the top leadership posts. Deng would give the order to violently crush the protestors in June 1989. Throughout the 1980s there was an ideological battle within the ranks of the Communist party. One group wished the government to maintain its policies. The other argued for liberalization, both economically and...

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...the process and maintain its power structure. These two nations, both communist powers with similar historic backgrounds, met two very different fates. Since the late 1980s, China has embarked on a series of economic reform that have led to the liberalization of their economy. Private enterprises thrive and the economy booms. Communist leaders have allowed this economic transition to take place and grow tremendously. Whereas since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has fallen into economic stagnation. The Russian Federation maintains many of the problems of the Soviet Union: a colossal bureaucracy, low standards of living, and high unemployment. Two similar nations faced with comparable circumstances took radically different paths. These dissimilar routes would lead each nation in opposite directions: one to a renaissance and the other one to its demise.