Deng Xiaoping's Massive Reform Set China on a Sky-rocketing Course

China’s economic position has changed greatly, particularly over the last 50 years. Mao Zedong, leader of China at the time, introduced a new method for improving China, often referred to as the 5 year plans. These plans, as the name may suggest, were used for five years, and had a main focus attached.

While Deng Xiaoping was in power, Deng reformed the education system and changed the Chinese culture to value education rather than view education as nonessential. Deng created advanced levels each year, and enforced education in all social classes (Chen). In 1988, the net enrollment and attendance rate in China for boys was approximately 98% and the rate for girls was approximately 92% (Education statistics: China). This new education system prepared Chinese citizens to contribute to the modernization of China. More people had become educated in subjects that were essential for coming up with new ideas and technological developments for China. Educated people helped expand industries and improve the economy. Also, since China’s workforce was made up of skilled workers who had more incentive to work, each industry in China was succeeding, and China’s economy thrived. However, Deng did not only restructure the education system. Deng also made many reforms to the agriculture industry, such as when Deng allowed for the privatization of farms. “Between 1978 and 1984 the per capita income in the countryside almost doubled”, meaning that farmers were making twice the amount of money they had made before Deng became the leader of China (Schoppa). Refining and modernizing the agriculture industry was very important. Under Deng’s rule, farmers could make the maximum

Deng Xiaoping began market-orientated reforms and opened the economy. The incomes of the poorer residents of china are on the increase, however the wealthier residents are still getting wealthier and much faster. Income inequality has risen at a faster pace than that of the United States according to the Gini coefficient. The income inequality is rapidly growing and is still at a very high level.

China economy started at 1978, the first economic growth reforms in 1979, the average annual Gross Domestic Product or for short GDP growth rate in China was about 5.3% from 1960-1978. China 's economy was mainly widespread of poverty, very low-income inequalities.The average national life expectancy has more than triple, rising thirty-two years in 1949 to sixty-nine years in 1985.

Many factors such as, growing liberalization, economic disparities, and inflations. led to the protests. During Mao Ze Dong's leadership, the Chinese government collectivized industries and agriculture. After his death, his successor Deng Xiao Ping implemented the Gai Ge Kai Fang policy, de-collectivizing industries and agriculture. (Huenemann 2017) This policy also allowed citizens greater freedom. Some academics even received encouragement from the government to take an active political stance. (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica) Following the privatization of agriculture and industries, China experienced great economic growth. Unfortunately, this also caused the rate of corruption, and economic disparities to surge. China also experienced price inflations as it

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)

China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a

China has reached a milestone in terms of achieving its centenarian goal of making China a prosperous nation once again. One of the ways that it has done this is by having steady economic growth even in the midst of an economic crisis. Not only has China’s economy grown, but its standard of living has also improved, it has achieved this by spending 70 percent of its fiscal revenue towards improving people’s standard of living. China has also pushed more anti-corruption reforms and has made efforts towards widening its economy by setting up freer trade.

Life in China during the 1980s began to progress because of the Economic Reform in Communist China. Leaders of the communist party, Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong did not agree with each other on one major part of Chinese history, which was the Cultural Revolution. Deng disagreed with Mao on Mao’s views about the ideas of a cultural revolution in China, because he believed that it would become a negative effect on the people. Deng Xiaoping was openly critical of Mao Zedong’s ideas but Deng was also one of the leaders of the communist party, so nonetheless, he was arrested and removed from office until the end of the Cultural Revolution. A few years later, in 1976, Mao Zedong had passed away, leaving the country in despair. Deng Xiaoping rose to power and began working non-stop on economic reforms in communist China in the many years to come. Deng Xiaoping was a much more effective leader than Mao Zedong. China began growing economically and Deng provided better lives for people and created hope for his country, but his journey was not short and nor was it simple.

China's transition from the leadership under the iron fist of Mao Zedong to the more liberal Deng Xiao Ping gave the People's Republic a gradual increase in economic freedom while maintaining political stability. During Mao's regime, the country focused on bolstering and serving the community, while subsequently encumbering individual growth and prosperity. Deng advocated a more capitalist economic ideology, which established China as an economic force in the global community while endowing its citizens with more liberties and luxuries than previously granted.

Deng Xiaoping has been the individual with the most impact on China since the 1970’s. Along with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he is looked at as one of the key figures in evolution of communism in China . Deng Xiaoping will be remembered as a national hero, but this was not always the case. The real story of Deng includes the fact that, on more than one occasion, his peers ostracized him. During his lifetime he has been a part of the many changes in China throughout the twentieth century. He was by Mao Zedong’s side through all of the struggles of the Chinese Communist Party; battling with Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang over

Deng Xiaoping felt that the quickest way to build a better China was to improve living conditions immediately, to give people the level of morale they need for further development. At that time, he realized that China’s economic need to reform; he found very effective ways to reform the China’s economic. His goals were to open up the China’s market to the outside world,

. Xiaoping implemented significant change going from a centrally planned economy run by the state, towards a private entrepreneur market based economy. This transition to a new type of socialist thinking, known as the socialist market economy, proved highly successful as it allowed China to move from a nation in poverty ruled by a single person to the second largest economy in the world. A more sudden or abrupt change could have easily resulted in the fall of China’s economy, similar to what certain European countries experienced in 1991 at the end of the cold war between the super powers.

From post-1976 onwards, Deng Xiaoping and his conservative pragmatist government would bring great reform to China, which would allow her to tide over the troubles caused by the crisis in communism. Indeed, it would seem that his economic reforms were the main reason for China's survival, as opposed to political reform. Under Deng Xiaoping, action was taken to move China from a Soviet-style command economy to a more capitalist market economy. On the other hand, political reform was not as pronounced as Deng wished to retain the traditional communist style of party dictatorship.

Growth in exports and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was extremely important to China’s economic success. During Mao’s last years in power, China was inaccessible to the outside world and this was costing the country growth-wise. Other countries such as Japan and Hong Kong were experiencing rapid growth from exports as shown in Exhibit 6, and China wanted to follow in their footsteps. The country has hard-working and educated people who could help make this a reality and Deng knew this was the next step in helping the country to be among the most advanced and most improved4. The United States has always been a wise contender and is always looking for ways to better its