The Rise, Growth, And Development Of China: A Historical Overview

Write about the rise, growth and development of china.

Asia is found in the East of the northern hemisphere, and even the word Asia means ‘sunrise’ as the sun rises in the east. It is the basis of some of the oldest areas of human civilization. It has two of the most populated nations in the world namely India and China. My main focus is in China, a country that has been known to be of prominent economic dominance in the past as well as in the present. It is also well known for its communist principles which run the country since the 1940s.

China is a nation found in East Asia. Its official name is The People's Republic of China. Its capital city is in Beijing. It is the largest country in Asia and the third largest in the world with a size of 9,600,000 square kilometers. It has a famous wall known as the Great Wall of China which runs East-West across the country’s north. It has the world’s biggest population of 1.37 billion as of 2014. It is approximated that a one-fifth of the total human population is Chinese. Much of the culture of the Chinese people are homogenous and borrowed less from the outside influence. This isolation helped the country to prosper century after century.

 The disadvantage of the isolation was that the Chinese state was not in a position to interact with the fast-changing outside world, especially in the 19^th century. In the mid-19^th century, it was confronted technologically superior foreign community. A century of gross decline ensued to the point that China was practically weak and helpless and prone to the external onslaught. (Hsiung, James and Steven. pp 0).

It was on July 7^th, 1997 when a crash happened between the Japan and China armies. This sparked great military activity on the side of Japan. Japan declared war on China which was at that time unstable, weak and defenseless. The Japanese troops marched into the developing country and killed millions of people while torturing and raping the women and children. Although China won the war in 1945 (Drea and Edward. pp 0). She suffered huge losses from loss of lives, destruction of property and the industries that had just been set up in the Nationalist government.

Communism is the removal of the personal possessions and removal of the existent social classes, property rights as well as inheritance rights. The government in charge is in control of all the economic resources and oversees the economic activities. This promotes equality among all the natives (Hodes, Nancy and Zedong. pp38).

China's Isolationist Past

China is well known for the communistic rule. The rise of communism in China came mostly after the second world war in 1949(Kuisong, Yang, and Stephen A. Smith. Pp 0). It became clear that the Chinese natives need to be united against their neighboring rivals, the Japanese.  As a result of long periods of the rule of the ruthless warlords, the Chinese people began joining political parties and revolutionary groups with the aim of gaining hopes of changing their country.

The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. This was a good sign of the end of the struggle of a better life for all. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong declared the creation of People’s Republic of China. This ended the long-term civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang, which had broken out following the world war 2. The people were now seen as a merged coalition of the four social classes which included the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie, the workers and the national capitalists. China's Communist Party reigned in the country for considerably more than 60 years.

Mao recognized the role of women in the society. He encouraged the women to strive and be the equals to men. He banned the traditional practice of foot binding which hobbled the women and kept them stuck in their homes. He also abolished prostitution to promote the respect of the women. He was against birth control, and this encouraged the increase of the Chinese population the rights of women got a big boost in 1950 when the Marriage Law was enforced which encouraged the equality of all sexes in marriage. This protected the women from exploitation from their husbands. This led to the gross improvement of the status of the women in the society while the role of women was transformed and even today they work side by side with men with a relatively equal footing in all occupations.

The other ideology was the Great Leap Forward. It was in operation from the year 1958-1960. It was meant to help the country in its transition from socialism to sole communism within a short time. This move will, as a result, increase agriculture and industrialization by application of centralization and communes. In agriculture, the government would control the sale as well as the production of agricultural goods. Large farming groups would share workloads and the available tools of work.

Communism in China

In the industrialization sector, the Great Leap Forward was concerned with the steel production. He made it a requirement that every commune should produce their steel. This led to melting of the kitchen and farming equipment. The poor people started to burn their doors and household furniture to keep the furnace fires burning after exhausting the local wood sources. However, this practice was later abandoned and real steel plants put in place. The ideology was however dropped in January 1961 at the 9^th plenum of the 8^th Central committee (Mao et al. pp 38).

The other Mao’s legacy is the hundred flowers campaign. He displayed his supposed will to consult the opinion of the Chinese natives on how the Republic should be led. The Chinese intellectual community came forward to give their views on the country’s leadership were later persecuted in the anti-rightist movement (Farquhar and Ann. Pp 0). The Mao’s cult was in existence in his reign and it exaggerated his achievements while concealing his dark side.

China is the home of culture. Chinese crafts and art which includes paintings, operas embroidery, and silk are unique as well as distinctive. It has also been well known for Kung Fu art, which is nowadays enjoying widespread popularity in many parts of the world. Chinese food is also very famous and nowadays it is being exported to many parts of the world. It has a vast population sharing the same culture, and this helps a great deal in unifying them (Galbraith, John. Pp 0). It also has an excellent scientific background with its significant inventions being paper, gunpowder and the compass.

The economy of China has enjoyed 30 years of explosive stages of growth which is arguably the world’s largest (King. Pp 0). The Chinese government has been at the forefront of this development. In 2017 the growth has been estimated to be $23.12 trillion, the world’s largest. This process started from back in 1950 with the rise of the communist government right after the world war (Lee, Sanghoon, and Dae-Won. pp 85). This growth, however, has its share of impacts on the local as well as the global community.

There has been greater productivity of the industries in China. A large variety of products are being produced to serve both the local and international market. This has increased the employment opportunities for local citizens. It has reduced in a notable decrease in the poverty levels in the country. Statistics say that it is only 3.3 % of the Chinese population who live below the set poverty line at 2,300 yuan.

China's Cultural Heritage

The global community is a beneficiary of this economical rise. The Chinese food has become famous in Asia amongst many other world countries (Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Ralph. pp 209).

China has been a major producer of the world widely used electronics. There have been great travel sites in China due to its big cultural history for example The great Wall of China (Su, Ming and Wall. pp 146). Due to the increased prominence the Bank of China also give loans and grants to facilitate growth of the developing countries.

There also have been some shortcomings due to the increment in the economic dominance. An example is the increased pollution especially in the urban centers where the industries are located. This has led to the outbreak and spread of diseases (Tang, Bo. pp 293). There also has been increased cost of urban housing due to the increased demand from the rising population.

On the future insight if the Chinese government is aiming to stabilize the economy to a point where the local natives do not have to rely too much on the imports. The Chinese president Xi has come up with the ‘made in China 2025’ plan which advocates for changes in technology in the big data, aircraft engines, and clean environmentally free cars. The project also favors improvement in the industrial sector where the products are now produced by the quality and not just quantity. This plan requires nurturing of the human skills. The government will also loosen the price control over water, electricity and other natural resources to promote the growth of the developing industries.                 

The increase of the prominence of China under the communist Zedong’s regime also had has implications on the other world countries (Teiwes, Frederick. Pp 0). The ideology came up just came up after the second world war. It was a feature of what came to be known as the cold war where the Soviet Union was in support of communism while America supported capitalism. China adopted communism as this was in line with the operation of the then government of Zedong (Yu and Mengyan Yolanda. Pp 0).

The general global community has also not treated the country in its real position following its prominent developments in the economic sector. It is not until 1980 that the majority of the world recognized the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate representative of China (Novokmet, Filip, et al. pp 0).

Economic Growth in Modern China

The United States is well known for its unilateralism which can be traced from back in the second world war especially with its policy on China. It is believed to have the perception of a self-righteous superpower leading the allies who cannot resist it. This has been the problems with its relationships with China which were strained by the Chinese government communist ideologies (Williams and Eve. Pp 0). The ties were later bound by the cooperation between US President Ronald Reagan and Chinese President Li Xiannian. China Minister of Commerce Zhongshan recently told multinational companies that there was no winner in a trade war and cooperation is the only alternative, as posted on the commerce ministry’s website.

Conclusion

Over the last seven decades China has undergone massive development and up to today it is a strong world power. It is a good example of the Asian countries which were known to be war torn and disorganized. They have now stabilized politically and now the economic improvement is worth reckoning.

References

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Yu, Mengyan Yolanda. Instrumental Autonomy, Political Socialization, and Citizenship Identity: A Case Study of Korean Minority Citizenship Identity, Bilingual Education and Modern Media Life in the Post-Communism Transitioning China. Springer, 2016.

Novokmet, Filip, et al. "From Communism to Capitalism: Private versus Public Property and Inequality in China and Russia." AEA Papers and Proceedings. Vol. 108. 2018.

Kuisong, Yang, and Stephen A. Smith. "Communism in China, 1900–2010." The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism. 2014.

Galbraith, John. American capitalism: The concept of countervailing power. Routledge, 2017.

King, Amy. China-Japan Relations after World War Two: Empire, Industry and War, 1949–1971. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Drea, Edward J. Japan's imperial army: Its rise and fall, 1853-1945. University Press of Kansas, 2016.

Hsiung, James C., and Steven I. Levine. China's Bitter Victory: War with Japan, 1937-45: War with Japan, 1937-45. Routledge, 2016.

Williams, Eve. "Friends to China: the role and impact of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit during the Chinese ‘War of Resistance’ (1937-1945)." (2016).

Lee, Sanghoon, and Dae-Won Oh. "Economic growth and the environment in China: Empirical evidence using prefecture level data." China Economic Review 36 (2015): 73-85.

Tang, Bo. "Real exchange rate and economic growth in China: A cointegrated VAR approach." China Economic Review 34 (2015): 293-310.

Mao, Qizhi, Ying Long, and Kang Wu. "Spatio-temporal changes of population density and exploration on urbanization pattern in China: 2000–2010." City Planning Review 39.2 (2015): 38-43.

Hodes, Nancy J., and Zedong Mao. "Report of the Hunan Provincial Committee to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party 1: On the Methods for Carrying out the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan." Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49: v. 3: From the Jinggangshan to the Establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930. Routledge, 2018. 37-38.

Farquhar, Mary Ann. Children's Literature in China: From Lu Xun to Mao Zedong: From Lu Xun to Mao Zedong. Routledge, 2015.

Teiwes, Frederick C. Leadership, legitimacy, and conflict in China: From a charismatic Mao to the politics of succession. Routledge, 2017.

Su, Ming Ming, and Geoffrey Wall. "Community participation in tourism at a world heritage site: Mutianyu Great Wall, Beijing, China." International Journal of Tourism Research 16.2 (2014): 146-156.

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