How the cultural revolution had changed China and the reforming and opening up revolution that came after it.
China, a country of East Asia, is the largest among all Asian countries with the largest population of any country in the world. China has thirty-three administrative units that are directly under the central government; these thirty-three units consist of twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two special administrative regions.
The two most well-known administration units are Beijing and Shanghai; Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic which holds the cultural, economic, and communications as the center of the country. On the other hand, Shanghai is the main industrial city and Hong Kong is the leading commercial center and port.
China has thousands of years of history, despite its political and social upheavals, its unique longevity and resilience as a discrete politico-cultural unit are among nations. For thousands of years, China isolated itself from the outside world had made itself own culture flourished and refined.
However, after the mid-nineteen century, because the self-isolation, it had given another century time for China to experience decline and decrepitude by the outside world. The outside world’s rejection had given a wake-up call to China, therefore, in the early twentieth century in order to against the old regime and culminated in the establishment fo a communist government in 1949, the following events had reshaped China’s global political geography and since then China has become the most influential countries in the world. (Silbergeld)
Before the Cultural Revolution had taken place, the Great Leap Forward was the reason that had led the China government to decide to go on with the cultural revolution. Between the years 1958 to early 1960, a campaign was undertaken by the Chinese communists in order to organize the largest population among other countries due to the fact that China was trying to develop into industrialization with the most privileged resource they have in their country – intense labor market.
However, the Great Leap had turned out to be a failure of the Soviet model of industrialization in China. The Soviet model failed because it was emphasized to gain their capital by selling agricultural products and turn them into heavy machinery, in contrary to the Soviet model China’s condition didn’t apply to this circumstance.
China has a very dense population but with a small agricultural surplus to o accumulate capital. Moreover, the major reason that had led the Great Leap to failure was that the agricultural and political decisions were decentralized and tended to be ideological rather than using expertise. Following with other errors in implementation that were made during series of natural disasters and most importantly, the withdrawal of Soviet support had disrupted China’s agriculture severely. In three consecutive years, there were twenty million people were dying of starvation between 1959 and 1962.
The failure of the Great Leap had not only broken up the country but also created division among the party leaders. After the failure of the Great Leap, Mao Zedong had then announced and launched his Cultural Revolution in early 1966. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica”
On May 16, 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, the main purpose of the cultural revolution was to stop the starvation that was caused by the Great Leap, however, this new revolution had turned out to be a political campaign that would go on to cause bloodshed and chaos to China. All this was beginning with his declaration in on May 16, 1966, he had personally wrote a poster that was entitled “Bombard the Headquarters”, which was meant to calling for an attack on the “command center of counter-revolution.”
What he had done never happened in other dictatorship leaders such as Stalin, Pol Pot, or Kim Jong Un. Even though the process of cultural revolution was crucial and had been a dark time to Chinese people, however, the ten years of dark time had opened up and reform China’s political parties and led China to become a stronger country among others.
After ten years of the tragic cultural revolution, Chinese Leader – Deng Xiaoping had delivered a speech that had laid out a new vision for China’s future on Dec 13th, 1978, which was the beginning of China’s opening up and reforming. He had proposed that all Chinese should have learned from other richer countries which allow their workers to motivate themselves and inspire others to work harder for their future. Moreover, he had also announced that the provinces and enterprises would be given the power to make their own decisions and try new things.
With Deng Xiaoping’s new vision, he had tried to lose all the restrictions and bars that Chinese people were forced to obey. Deng Xiaoping had found the main problem of China after the cultural revolution that thousands of years of isolation from outside worlds had made China fall behind other countries and the only way to make this country to be good again, China had to open up to the world and accept different voices of their own people. (Kopf Dan)
After Deng Xiaoping took over the office, he introduced the “Four Basic Principles” which was also called “Four Cardinal Principles” in March 1979. The “Four Cardinal Principles” includes keeping to the socialist road, upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat, upholding the leadership of the Communist Party, and upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought. In his perspective, he believed that these four principles were the basic prerequisites for China to achieve modernization. These four principles were even written into the preamble of the Constitution of the PRC, which was adopted in 1982.
They have been remaining until the present day. (Four Basic Principles) Deng had been trying to tie the party together, before he put out the Four Cardinal Principles, he had been leading CCP to a series of national conferences throughout the country. And they had started to focus on workers’ interests such as reinstating wage bonuses, moreover, in order to boost up the economic growth, Deng even used the government’s resources to increase investment. The major change before the four principles was China’s participation in the international economy, the reason behind the steep growth of China’s economy was because China had formally established full diplomatic relations with the United States. (Keightley David)
The reformation of the US and China’s relationship had been the major and motivation reason for China’s growth. In the year 1978, after months’ secrete negotiation between leaders, both United States and China had come to an agreement that China would be recognized as official diplomatic relations to the United States that the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China and ended the diplomatic recognition from Taiwan.
This agreement had been the biggest event in China’s history because the United States had never established formal diplomatic relations with China. Moreover, for the next thirty years, the People’s Republic of China had been recognized as the sole legal government of Taiwan. Before Jimmy Carter took the office, previous Presidents before Nixon had failed to make any significant progress in improving the relationship with the People’s Republic of China. President Nixon was the first President had made the progress going, however, due to the Watergate scandal and the collapse of South Vietnam, President Nixon was forced to stop the progress of reforming the relationship with China. However, the reformation was just a temporary stop, after Jimmy Carter took over the office, the progress was again put on the schedule. (China Policy)
The reason that the U.S was eager to normalize the relationship with China could be categorized under these major conclusions: large bilateral surplus acts which have contributed to trade tensions, the rapid growth of bilateral trade on U.S economy was positive, intellectual property rights, and the self-inflicted export disincentives had discouraged U.S exports. After China started participating in the global market, it had exposed some particular problems for high-income countries such as the United States, which was the biggest breakthrough of China’s economic performance after the reformation in 1979.
There were two fundamental points that China’s economic performance could rapidly grow after it opened up to the global market, first was that China had an incompletely reformed economic system; their agriculture had been decollectivized and most of the business firms were decentralized. Moreover, even though the property rights reform has been facilitated an explosion of businesses outside central government control, people would still conclude that China still needs an effective system to guarantee property rights.
Additionally, the other fundamental point of China’s economic explosion was the fact that China is huge enough that its economic system could not be analyzed as any small economy cases. Unlike North Korea, China’s sheer size not only means the rest of the world should take the development in China seriously, but also take it as the single potential threat to the stability of the international economy.
Although China had just entered the global market, its own purchasing power and natural resources had made China become the world’s third-largest economy which just followed after the United States and Japan in the year 1993. In the next decade, due to the uncertainty of China’s questioning economic polity in the post-Deng era and the reinforcement of Hong Kong’s share of output that was added to China, these two major factors had made China become the second-largest economy in the world. Furthermore, China’s active participation in the international market had boosted its market share risen from 0.6 percent to 4.9 percent, which had made it the world’s eighth-largest trading nation in 1994. The reformation of China’s economic system and the relationship with the United States had turned China from a poor country to the most influential country in the world. (US-China Relation)
The reformation of China’s economy has opened up its door to the rest of the world, since 1979, every country in the world had witnessed the growth of China and being surprised by its change. As China never stop stronger itself, United States President Clinton then had issued a statement that granted China the Most Favor Nation status on human rights in 1993. In Clinton’s statement, he had addressed the concerns that the American people had had towards China include its political leaders and the economical position that China holds in the global market. Despite all the concerns that the American people had had, Clinton had pointed out the importance of China to the world which includes the fact that it is a nation that has the largest population in the world and an important impact on the world’s economy, environment and politics.
The purpose of granting China this MFN status was based on forcing China to improve its human rights of their own people within twelve months time period. Even though China had grown so fast that other countries had had difficulties catching up with its speed, however, the lack of human rights practice was the main reason that the United States still held doubts about China’s reformation. (Statement by President Clinton)
The first time that China was granted as the Most Favored Nation, it was actually a chance that President Clinton would like to see if China could be more opened up on the economic, social, and political to the world. To the American people, granting China as the Most Favored Nation not only means they had agreed to welcome Chinese people to both of their lives and workplaces but also had agreed to tie with China and help them to survive through the darkest time in their history.
No matter this statement was a favor to the American people or not, reforming and bonding the relationship with the United States had been the most turning point for China on its way to becoming the biggest competitor and strongest country to America. Nevertheless, granting China as the Most Favored Nation did have some advantages to the United States which include that China would a significant market for the United States.
China’s efforts on reforming, improving, and modernizing its economic reformation had made the United States believe that its economic growth would cause a significant increase in demand for its imports, which would have benefited the United States on its exports. Furthermore, making China become United States’ significant market also benefits its own import market. The United States always had the surge to import China’s products while China was isolated itself from the outside world. After granting China MFN status, the United States could achieve its goal of importing those products that had lower cost but required intensive labor work that was contrary to the United States.
China’s continual growth in the economy has made the U.S congress debate on the trade policies that the United States holds towards China on annual basis. No matter how the United States or other countries concern or doubt in China, China didn’t stop seeking breakthrough for its own country and people. In December 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization which was seen as a victory of China’s free trade and economic liberalization of the international community.
The World Trade Organization which is known as the WTO serves its members three main functions, includes facilitating trade negotiations, monitoring compliance, and arbitrating trade disputes of their member countries. Since China joined the WTO, it has been an active member country among others, it has made extensive commitments on domestic reformation and reduces the trade barriers to other countries. China has continued putting efforts in economic growth and it has made them become the integral like in global supply chains.
Before joined the WTO, China had also involved in other major international organizations including the United Nations since 1971, the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund since 1980. But the actual economic boost was after China joined the WTO, the economy was driven by the tariff reduction. With its economic influence, China has had a great impact on the WTO, for example, the veto power in the UN which is held as a permanent member of the Security Council. The influence of China in the WTO has a special impact on Taiwan and South Korea, which has not only heavily rely on trading with China but also has refrained from filing any disputes against them.
On the other hand, in order to receive the “special and differential treatment” such as extending windows for implementing WTO commitments and assistance with handling disputes and technical matters, China has determined itself as a “developing” country which has heightened the tensions within the WTO member countries. However, other WTO members could not agree that China should hold more benefits to stronger its economic capability, therefore, the United States has proposed to reform the requirements for this designation in 2019.
On the contrary of accepting the United States’ proposal, China, on the other hand, has submitted its own reform proposal which indicated that there was a certain member (the U.S) purposely blocking appointments to the WTO’s Appellate Body. Unlike 1979, China in the present day does not need United States’ help to be standing in front of the world. China now has the power and voice to stand up and speak for itself. (How Influential Is China)
Above all, although the cultural revolution had caused bloodshed and chaos, no matter how brutal the process was, it did somehow successfully woken up Chinese people’s consciousness of being a Chinese people and realized how weak and poor their country was. Even though Mao had used a crucial and violent way to try to put an end to the starvation and raised his people’s awareness of what there the condition of their own country, what he had done had led China went going on a different path of future.
After Deng Xiaoping took over the leadership of the government and party, China was finally turning into a country that their post leaders had pictured for them. From 1979 until the present day, everyone in the world can see how strong and different that China has been turning into. Although there are people or countries hold different voice and perspectives of China’s position and influence on the world, and perhaps trying to stop China’s continuing growth, it is hard to stop China’s own wills from pushing themselves to become the strongest or the most powerful country among others. Last but not least, China’s growth and future are uncertain and not foreseeable, its uncertainty of political and economic freedom and improvement on their own human rights has been the major factors that the United States or other countries would examine.
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