History of the People's Republic of China

[4] Under Mao's rule, China went through a socialist transformation from a traditional peasant society, leaning towards heavy industries under planned economy, while campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution wreaked havoc on the entire country.

Mao urged the use of communally organised iron smelters to increase steel production, pulling workers off of agricultural labor to the point that large amounts of crops rotted unharvested.

[17] However, Mao's failure with the Leap reduced his power in government, whose administrative duties fell to President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, especially after the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in early 1962.

[28] In 1967, rebel groups began seizing power from local governments and party branches, establishing new revolutionary committees in their place meanwhile smashing the police, procuratorate and judicial systems.

[34][35] Beijing was very pleased that the success of the Soviet Union in the space race – the original Sputniks – demonstrated that the international communist movement had caught up in high technology with the Americans.

[11][12][26] China turned into a de facto one-party state after the Anti-Rightist Campaign starting in 1957, during which democracy and the rule of law were damaged while at least 550,000 intellectuals and political dissidents were persecuted.

In December 1978, with the support of Ye Jianying and other high-ranking officials, Deng eventually replaced Hua and became the paramount leader of China during the 3rd plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of CCP.

[79] Within several years starting 1978, victims of more than 3 million "unjust, false, wrongful cases" were rehabilitated by Deng and his allies such as Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

[91] Deng championed the idea of Special Economic Zones (SEZ), including Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Xiamen, areas where foreign investment would be allowed to pour in without strict government restraint and regulations, running on a basically capitalist system.

[93][94] Under the leadership of Yuan Geng, the "Shekou model" of development was gradually formed, embodied in its famous slogan "Time is Money, Efficiency is Life", which then widely spread to other parts of China.

[105] Supporters of the economic reforms point to the rapid development of the consumer and export sectors of the economy, the creation of an urban middle class that now constitutes 15% of the population, higher living standards (which is shown via dramatic increases in GDP per capita, consumer spending, life expectancy, literacy rate, and total grain output) and a much wider range of personal rights and freedoms for average Chinese as evidence of the success of the reforms.

[108][109][110][111] He called for the end of bureaucracy, centralisation of power as well as patriarchy, proposing term limits to the leading positions in China and advocating the "democratic centralism" as well as the "collective leadership".

[115][116] A five-man research unit for China's political reforms was established in September 1986, and the members included Zhao Ziyang, Hu Qili, Tian Jiyun, Bo Yibo and Peng Chong.

On the other hand, many policies due to the political reforms launched by Deng in the early 1980s remain effective after 1989 (such as the new Constitution, term limits, and the democratic centralism), even though some of them have been reversed by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping after 2012.

[130] In 1986, the student demonstrations led to the resignation of Hu Yaobang, then General Secretary of CCP and a leading reformist, and the left-wing conservatives continued to launch the "Anti-Bourgeois Liberalisation Campaign".

Western countries and multilateral organisations briefly suspended their formal ties with China's government under Premier Li Peng's leadership, which was directly responsible for the military curfew and bloody crackdown.

Furthermore, China continued to support Khmer Rouge during Deng Xiaoping's time together with the United States, Thailand and several other countries to counter the regional influence of the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, visited Beijing and met with Deng Xiaoping during the Sino-Soviet Summit, which took place amid the Tiananmen Square protests.

[141][142] In the 1980s and early 1990s, People's Republic of China continued to establish formal diplomatic relations with a number of countries such as United Arab Emirates (1984), Qatar (1988), Saudi Arabia (1990), Singapore (1990), Israel (1992) and South Korea (1992).

[130][131] To cope with the population crisis after Mao's era, Deng Xiaoping, together with other senior officials including Chen Yun and Li Xiannian, supported the implementation of the "one-child policy".

Wealth disparity between the Eastern coastal regions and the Western hinterlands continued to widen by the day, prompting government programs to "develop the West", taking on ambitious projects such as the Qinghai–Tibet railway.

[178] Jiang Zemin, after formally retiring as the paramount leader of China in 2004, was believed to have moved behind the scenes and was still in control of the country even after his late step-down from the Chairman of the Central Military Commission in 2005.

[184][185] The assertion of the Scientific Perspective to create a Socialist Harmonious Society was the focus of the Hu Jintao – Wen Jiabao administration, as some Jiang Zemin-era excesses were slowly reversed.

[citation needed] Continued economic growth during the worldwide financial crisis which started in the United States and hobbled the world economy increased China's confidence in its model of development and convinced elites that the global balance of power was shifting.

Hu's critics say that his government was overly aggressive in asserting its new power, overestimated its reach, and raised the ire and apprehension of various neighbours, including Southeast Asian countries, India, and Japan.

[216] As Xi Jinping continued to consolidate power domestically, he gradually abandoned the diplomatic principles ("hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead") set by Deng Xiaoping and appeared more as a "strongman" in the global stage.

Since 2012, Xi Jinping together with his allies has rolled back several policies from the Boluan Fanzheng period of Deng Xiaoping and promoted his cult of personality as Mao Zedong did.

For example, in 2018, Xi Jinping eliminated the term limit in China's Constitution for Chinese President, which challenged some of the political legacies of Deng Xiaoping and triggered concerns about a return to a one-man rule similar to Mao.

[236][237] Moreover, the Xinjiang internment camps since 2017, in which over a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being detained, and the massive protests in Hong Kong since 2019 have received widespread attention and extensive media coverage from around the world.

[238][239][240][241] The Hong Kong national security law published on 30 June 2020 also received widespread attention and raised considerable concern worldwide over the breach of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle.