Reform and opening up
Under Deng Xiaoping, China turns from Maoist campaigns to markets, foreign investment and growth, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty in four decades.
- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China — Ezra F. Vogel, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)
- Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead — World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, World Bank (2022)
- Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century — Orville Schell and John Delury, Random House (2013)
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
When Mao died in 1976, China was poor and exhausted. Deng Xiaoping, rehabilitated in 1977, emerged as paramount leader, and the Third Plenum of the Party’s Central Committee in December 1978 is taken as the start of “reform and opening”. Deng’s pragmatism was summed up in his saying that it does not matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice.
- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China — Ezra F. Vogel, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)
The reforms
Change began in the countryside. Villages, most famously Xiaogang in Anhui, secretly divided collective land among households; the household responsibility system let farmers sell surplus crops, and food output soared. From 1980 special economic zones, starting with Shenzhen beside Hong Kong, welcomed foreign investment; a fishing town became a city of millions. Township enterprises and private businesses spread; prices were gradually freed.
- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China — Ezra F. Vogel, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
The one-child policy, enforced from 1980, sometimes brutally, was part of the same push to raise income per head. It was eased to two children in 2016 and to three in 2021.
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
- China — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
After the crackdown of 1989 reform stalled, until Deng’s “southern tour” of 1992 relaunched it. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and became “the world’s factory”.
- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China — Ezra F. Vogel, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)
- Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century — Orville Schell and John Delury, Random House (2013)
Results
According to the World Bank, the number of people in China living in extreme poverty fell by close to 800 million between 1978 and the late 2010s, about three-quarters of the global reduction in that period.
- Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead — World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, World Bank (2022)
- Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead — World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, World Bank (2022)
- Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century — Orville Schell and John Delury, Random House (2013)
The most successful development story in history, under Party leadership: "socialism with Chinese characteristics" brought ordinary families from hunger to cars and apartments in a single lifetime.
- Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China — Ezra F. Vogel, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2011)
- Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China: Drivers, Insights for the World, and the Way Ahead — World Bank and Development Research Center of the State Council, World Bank (2022)
Much of the change came from below, from farmers and entrepreneurs, with the state following. Growth came with steep costs: rural-urban inequality, the hukou system that kept migrant workers second-class, environmental damage, and no political liberalisation.
- China: A New History (2nd enlarged edition) — John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2006)
- Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century — Orville Schell and John Delury, Random House (2013)
Why it matters today
Most Chinese alive today grew up in the reform era, and the change in living standards is the basis of much of the Party's legitimacy and of ordinary people's optimism. It also created new inequalities, migrant workers, pollution and fierce competition that shape daily life.