Saturday 3 December 2011

Weekly Blog #4: Reforming China into Capitalism

Was he really god or not?

This week we learned about how the central power of the CCP shifted from Mao to Deng Xiaoping during the People’s Republic of China.  After Deng Xiaoping became the leader of the Communist Party of China, he led China to turn towards a market economy, into capitalism. He began transforming China by abolishing the rural commune and making the farm households participate in the “responsibility system” where land could be sold, bought, and inherited without allowing the farmers to own their land; farmers had to lease land from the collective.  Farmers wanted to make as much money as possible, so they shifted to cash crops. Deng furthered his reforms by establishing special economic zones that enabled many different zones, like Shenzhen, to modernize by allowing a flood of foreign visitors in. Foreign firms were often offered incentives by these zones which included low taxes, new plants, and cheap labor force.

The Reformer (Deng Xiaoping)
In an article about a Chinese woman, called Bai Di, who grew up in socialist China and who participated in the Cultural Revolution, she talks about the different environment people live in back in her days compared to modern day. When she was young, she only needed two sets of clothes to live—since she didn’t have that much things, so she felt that she has never needed more than she has then. But compared to present time under the capitalist society, more and more people develop desires for everything. Now, everything is about “money, money, money”.  She continues to compare the Mao era to capitalism by emphasizing that individualism in a capitalistic society only allows you to think that you are the most important, that it would be a boring life as “your existence is irrelevant to others”. Since a capitalistic society involves fierce competition between companies and/or individual businessmen, so the whole society promotes individualism. The essence of uniting together equally to make profits, like communism, is gone. This was the start of an economic boom in China.

Deng Xiaoping was able to turn China from a poor and regressive country into a country with rapid economic growth. His reforms were successful and China was able to grow, it continues to grow today. 

3 comments:

  1. Interesting interview with the Chinese woman Bai Di. I thought it was a very critique-like yet representing the-harsh truth of today's society. Her background of being in the Cultural Revolution and her socialist views are very different from ours, especially us who benefit from the capitalism. It shows how radical Deng's views were, yet how crucial they were as they account for the Chinese capitalistic-socialistic fusion (leaning towards capitalism) economy today. Your take on it as you incorporate the woman's story into your blog as well as presenting your own thoughts and opinions about it seem very organized and well-developed. :)

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  2. I have commented on Jae Young's post here.
    http://hocjy.blogspot.com/2011/12/weekly-blog-4.html

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  3. I really liked you mentioning individualism in Deng's China, Amber. But although Deng did make China an economically strong country, I think that there were parts were Mao's collectivist China did better. For a poor nation like China, citizens willing to make sacrifices to the state was also essential, and I think it's unhealthy, that the elements of unity and cooperation for the greater good is wearing away with the entrance of capitalism.

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