CHINA: Econ. Geog - Communist Policies

• Before Oct. 1, 1949
• Economic Situation after Oct. 1, 1949
• Chinese Communism
• Deng's New Direction

Before Oct. 1, 1949

• Decades of instability and war: 3-way struggle
  1. Nationalists in control-capital in Nanjing [chcities]
  2. Communists led by Mao Zedong
  3. Japanese controlled the Northeast Province [jpemp31] (also called Manchuria. Called Manchukuo by the Japanese)
• Japan defeated in WWII [jpempire] losing all of their empire (exept the Ryukyu and Bonin islands [jpsouth]).
• Civil war in China
• Mao Zedong's [chmarch] communist militias defeat Chaing Kai-sheks nationalists after decades of war
• Chang Kai-shek and the nationalists fled to and took over Taiwan [chtai]
• Oct. 1, 1949 - People's Republic of China formed controlled by the communists

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Economic Situation after Oct. 1, 1949

• economy in ruins
• famine threatened
• still some armed opposition
• rapid population growth

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Chinese Communism

• China becones a command economy
  (For a review of command and market economies see: econsys.htm)
• land reform
  • first from wealthy landowners to landless peasants
  • then peasants forced to pool their land into collectives
  • finally, private land ownership abolished, communes formed
• Industries taken over by the State
  • based on the soviet model
  • large investments made
  • the former Japanese controlled [jpemp31] Mancuria in the Northeast becomes the manufacturing belt taking advantage of the infronstructure left by the former Japanese colonizers.
• personal lives greatly affected
  • communal living
  • sexes separated
  • children cared for by the State
• Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
  • "strict orthodox communism"
  • schools closed
  • youth organized into the "Red Guards"
  • 1966 onwards: chaos
  • perhaps 20 million died
• 1976 Mao Zedong dies
  • internal struggle between "Maoists" and "moderates"
  • moderate Deng Xiaoping takes power

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Deng's New Direction

• Contradiction: inward-looking (or closed) politically, but the beginnings of a more outward-looking (or open) economically
• closed: communist political control
• open: capitalist economic policies
• contradiction handled by spatially separating the economic experiment from the rest of the country
• Special Economic Zones/Open Cities/Open Coastal Areas [chsez]
• Deng Xiaoping dies in 1997

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