China Change after the Death of Mao Zedong - Essay Example

How did China change after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 Was Chinese communism strengthened or weakened as a result The republic of China has been ruled by different leaders with different approaches in the recent centuries. Many of the leaders were of the communist approach while many of them of the capitalist approach. In the 1950s China was being ruled by Mao Zedong who was of the communist approach. He tried to develop different strategies to make his republic prosper. The two major strategies of his era were Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. However both these strategies were aimed for the betterment of the republic both of them failed drastically. They failed to such an extent that many of the people in China died because of the conflicts caused by these two approaches. However the communist approach adopted by Mao was for the betterment of the Chinese people it failed to provide them with adequate reforms. Mao Zedong is still regarded to be a strong communist leader in the history of China.1 After the death of Mao Zedong different fights broke out in China to achieve the premiership. However in the end Deng Xiao-ping succeeded in the fights for premiership and took over the office. His reforms were a bit different from Mao Zedong and were successful enough. However the approach adopted by Deng Xiao-ping can be said to be different than that of Mao Zedong in terms of capitalism. This essay would further analyze the state of China after the death of Mao Zedong, the reforms introduced in China after his death and the survival of communism after Mao Zedong.2 In the era of Mao Zedong the approach adopted by him was of a communist perspective. He wanted the wealth to be divided equally amongst the people of China; however the strategies adopted by him were not successful as expected by him.3 The strategy of Great Leap Forward implemented by Mao Zedong was of an unrealistic nature if viewed closely. It wanted the state of China to prosper in a very short time which was quite impossible as it was already going through an economic depression.4 Mao Zedong through this strategy wanted the urbanization of China without adopting proper methods. The peasants were asked to provide the state with certain amount of yield which discouraged the peasants from growing a crop. Similarly the hierarchy of bureaucrats kept the government in dark about the total income of the yield and gave them the wrong figures. Thus this wrong amount of yield shown to the higher authorities was exported and this caused a famine in China. Due to this famine many of the people in China died because of shortage of grain. Furthermore not only this strategy caused a loss to the state of China but also a strategy named Cultural Revolution.5 The Cultural Revolution gave a segment of youth particular powers over others. This army of youth was called Red Guards. Red Guards were asked to root out the class differences in China and kill the people who were doing it. Similarly these Red Guards took wrong steps and misused their power to kill many people. This strategy also failed making the government of Mao Zedong weaker.6 Similarly in 1976 after the death of Mao Zedong the premiership was taken over by Deng Xiao-ping who was of a different perspective then Mao Zedong. The steps taken in the era of Deng are not only of economic importance to China but also of the overall progress which happened in China. The major strategy adopted by the premier Deng Xiao-ping was of the four modernizations. This approach was adopted on a capitalist platform and according to Deng the path which was of prosperity should not take into account the capitalist or communist perspective. The four modernizations laid down a plan which aimed at upgrading the four major departments of China which are Agriculture, Industry, Science and Technology and Defense. All these sectors were taken into account by Deng Xiao-ping and so a strategy was formed to upgrade them respectively.7 Through this strategy Deng needed automated industrial sectors with more machineries being introduced and a balanced economical structure of China. Deng wanted these four sectors to be modernized according to the modern world.8 In the era of Deng Xiao-ping the state of China prospered economically. The plans laid down by him were well thought and implemented. During the era of Deng major agreements were made between China and other states which allowed the other foreign countries to intervene in the economical sector of China. Furthermore a deal between United Kingdom and China was sought out during the era of Deng regarding Hong Kong and China's sovereignty.9 In the era of Mao the economical status of China suffered drastically and thus it took time for the government of Deng to recover it successfully. A ten year plan was laid down to restructure the whole economy of China. The strategies implemented by Mao not only disturbed the whole environment of China but also lowered down the manufacture of steel in China. The immediate step taken by the government of Deng was to retrieve the amount of manufacture of steels in China and further increase it to a huge amount. To cover this manufacture deals were sought out with different foreign investing companies which invested successfully in China. The energy reserves of China were starting to get inadequate in the era of Mao and this was also brought to norms in the era of Deng. Similarly the sector of agriculture was lacking behind comparatively with the whole world. Modernization of the agricultural department was sought out by Deng and new equipments of agriculture were introduced in the market to increase the yield of the crops. A certain amount of budget was allocated to the sector of agriculture so that new machineries could be introduced in the sector. In the era of Deng many of the foreign companies were encouraged to invest in the republic of China. And this provided the government of China with huge profits so that they could invest in other sectors. Foreign investment was a major step taken during the era of Deng Xiao-ping. Deng advocated the ownership of private entities and this made China a global power in the world.10 He adopted both communist and capitalist views in promoting his government. According to Deng every individual is responsible for his/her own good will. He allowed individual freedom to prosper and in result many of the individuals prospered. The education in China was previously based on communist principles laid down by Mao, however in the era of Deng the principles were changed to capitalist ones.11 The living standards of the people in China increased to a greater level under the government of Deng. He provided people with certain amount of freedom which they could practice and according to some scholars this freedom was even more than granted in the government of Mao. Under the rule of Deng he discouraged the idea of collectivization (i.e. all the people should be brought forward together in achieving economic success) and he promoted the idea of decollectivization.12 According to him the individuals who would work hard would prosper than the others who did not. Deng provided the individuals of China with a certain amount of freedom but did not want them to attain furthermore of this freedom. This can be clearly viewed in the incident which occurred on Tiananmen Square which was committed by a number of protestors to achieve freedom according to their will. However these protestors were crushed down by the army on the order of Deng. This showed that Deng was of both the communist and capitalist perspective, however it can also be said that he was more oriented towards the capitalist perspective.13 On the other hand it can be viewed that in the era of Mao the freedom given to the individuals of China was limited. In his era free speech was strictly forbidden in China and the movements introduced by Mao were clearly aimed at certain segments of people. The youth movement can be viewed as on of these movements which discouraged individual thinking.14 Mao also introduced collectivization in his era which urged people to work together towards a better agricultural sector. The land distributed in this era was distributed evenly although this can be viewed as a negative factor as it did not allow private ownership. It gave more power to peasants and farmers and made them possess lands evenly. Furthermore another movement of Great Leap Forward by Mao clearly showed that he aimed at degrading the western powers in terms of agriculture and did not provide communal freedom to the people. In his era individual wealth was considered to be an obstruction in the prosperity of China. This showed that proper democracy was also not achieved through the strategies implemented by Mao himself.15 Both these eras were although aimed at the betterment of China were of different perspectives. In my view the era of Deng was more democracy oriented than that of Mao. However Deng was more oriented towards capitalist perspectives he provided people with more liberty and peace than that given in the government of Mao. In contrast the government of Mao tried to provide equal rights to all the segments of the society but failed in doing so. Collectivization was one type of reform which was introduced by him to provide with all the segments of society with equal wealth. However the different movements launched by his government (Cultural Revolution) were a sign that Mao did not want to give liberty to all the segments of the people living in China. The free market structure was introduced in the era of Deng he still provided people with equal rights. Individual prosperity increased in the era of Deng and this shows that capitalism was also promoted in his era. But if all the strategies of both the premiers are analyzed it can be concluded that the era of Deng did not weaken communism but instead made it stronger as compared to the era of Mao.16 Bibliography LEIBO, S. A. (2000). East, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific, 2000. World today series. Harpers Ferry, W. Va, Stryker-Post Publications. 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