Deng’s second attempt was the ‘Rush to Riches.’ He intended to make China rich by the C21st.
Why are some parts of China so rich while other parts are so poor?
The Chinese, who for years had been told they were communist, that any element of capitalism would be brought down, were soon seeing the ideals and elements of capitalism introduced into their economic system.
Deng focussed on the already rich, instead of thinking about the poor, so the poor were being left behind in the ‘rush to riches.’ He encouraged mining as a way for the poorer people to fuel the economic revolution, which resulted in thousands of deaths. The mines were dangerous, there was no high priority to look after them very well, and there were no checks for gas leaks, which was the main killer. Eventually Deng’s government closed down the mines, leaving the public with no jobs. Factories were to be their only hope.
Many peasants and workers began to work in factories, owned by the rich. However the rich owners had taken advantage of the desperate need of the workers for work and an income of any sort and they exploited the workers by giving them not only very low wages but also very long working hours. The rich owners, keeping their workers in bad health, ruthlessly overworked and with barely enough money to survive, pocketed the profits. Everyone was so desperate to get rich, that the factory owners exploited all of the workers and peasants who had been working at the factories. This was exactly what the Communisms hated about Capitalism; that the rich, who were not working as hard as them, exploited the poorer factory workers. Deng’s policies have affected China a great deal; the effects are still around today, as the majority of China’s population is male.
Another man who was responsible for China’s economic downfall was Mao Zedong.
Mao became China’s leader in 1921 just before Deng Xiaping, and wanted to bring equality to the population of China. When he proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China was considered the sick man of Asia. The population had suffered over the years: only one in ten school-age children could read and write; the average life expectancy was only 36 years as out of 1000 children born, 160-170 died in infancy as only 84,000 hospital beds were available to half a billion people.
After Mao had rewarded his peasant supporters by redistributing all land, he organised the nationalisation of all industries, which he had accomplished by 1956. He was soon very popular with the poor as a result of this policy, and began to develop his own brand of communism, launching one mass-action campaign after another. Mao was convinced that the sheer numbers of the Chinese population meant that anything was possible. His philosophy was that with the right direction and with sufficient will- power, China would be able to accomplish anything. He believed that the country needed to overtake the West in its production of steel and food, which would allow China to control its own destiny. During the 1950s he set up cooperatives to help people work together. This did improve productivity and agricultural methods and had some success.
Why are some parts of China so rich while other parts are so poor?
In addition, the communist USSR gave help and advice to Mao in the form of money, expertise and equipment. Using Soviet ideas, Mao wrote his first five-year plan for China. Education and health slowly improved but all were based on communist propaganda. Women were given a new role within society and encouraged to work alongside men.
However, Mao began to feel critical of the development of a new middle class in China, who were growing wealthy from their expertise in agriculture and industry. He wrote a second five-year plan. In the Great Leap Forward he developed the idea of cooperatives into a system of communes on a large scale. This led to ordinary people building schools, dams, bridges and operating blast furnaces. By 1958 there were 26,000 communes in China.
He later intended to mobilise the country after agricultural and industrial productivity, by introducing the ‘Great Leap Forward.’ His aim was to eliminate poverty in China. Mao encouraged the public to get together and leave their current jobs, so that they could concentrate on building a dam and great furnaces, for steel production. He maintained that this would make them rich and seemed single-minded in his aim without considering the consequences that might result.
The public worked on building the dam and furnaces, neglecting their families, farms and crops, also their jobs. Chinese peasants were so desperate to meet their steel production targets that Mao had set them, that they even melted their cooking woks and bicycles, turning the once useful objects back into raw materials they started off as. The people had no knowledge or the skills necessary to produce steel of a sufficiently high standard; the steel they finally produced was useless. Mao also wanted to double food production, setting a target for the public to meet each day. Without modern machinery and processes, the peasants had no idea how to double the food production; they resorted to planting double the amount of seeds and the closely packed crops died. This also ended in disaster.
In their eagerness for success, the people used their children in the factories, meaning that they were not getting an education for two years. The crops were meanwhile rotting; farm animals were dead, causing a mass starvation. The starvation lasted for two years and 20 million people died as a result. Mao’s single-minded ambitions and lack of realistic long-term planning had caused this. Mao has failed to eliminate poverty; the Great Leap worsened the situation as China was now in poverty and suffering badly.
Mao soon launched the Cultural Revolution because he was worried about the future of communism in China. He told young students in schools to form Red Guard units, to seek out teachers who might be against communism in all areas. All schools and colleges were closed for three years so that every student took part in the revolutionary activity. The Red Guards smashed up historic buildings, museums, and beat up and tortured anyone who had jobs who earned more than the poor peasants. Children went on strike; they were on Mao’s side, rebelling against their parents, teachers and anyone who was slightly more important than them.
Anyone who showed signs of being Capitalist was killed or tortured, and searches in people’s houses were the daily routine for the Red Guards. The Cultural Revolution was out of control; hundreds of people were being killed in mass fights and street battles - the Red Guards against the local ‘capitalists.’
Why are some parts of China so rich while other parts are so poor?
The mass attack resulted in total loss of industry, the failure to educate 100 million students, and thousands of deaths. Three years of terror and ten years of repression had been unleashed. Mao had failed again to eliminate poverty in China; all he had managed to do was make China insecure socially, politically and economically. He had also become the man to blame for the millions of deaths of Chinese people.
His eagerness and ambition for change may have been well intentioned, but his lack of foresight and planning led to the downfalls that occurred. He seemed to believe all the answers were within China, while he should have been less proud and requested more advice from the outside world. Because of Mao’s unrealistic ideas, China’s wealth is now imbalanced; his ambitions for the poor to become richer, failed. Not only did they leave their jobs and lose their incomes, they lost any hope of ever improving their lifestyles in any way, and were left worse off than before. He did not improve the imbalance in wealth; he made the gap between the rich and the poor even greater.
Although Deng Xioping and Mao Zedong are partly to blame for the downfall of China, the problem dates back before their leadership. For thousands of years, China had been the most advanced civilisation in the world. The Chinese had been around the world in ships by the C1800’s and considered themselves superior to other countries, as they had discovered many countries and brought back many valuable goods. They did not want or need anything when Europe showed interest in trading with China; China sent them away. This superior and insular attitude meant that China could not benefit from gaining knowledge from other countries. China was left alone to struggle to develop without the advantage of learning from others’ experiences and progress further. By the late 1800s, China was no longer the most superior country.
By 1839, the British were no longer willing to be kept at arm’s length by China. Thousands of miles from home, the royal navy attacked China during the Opium wars to force trade between China and Europe. The Chinese were easily defeated, and for hundreds of years the West and Japan exploited and controlled China’s trade. Some parts of China, like Shanghai and Hong Kong, were even run by the West. Because China had refused to make technological progress, there are fewer jobs available in China today. This is part of the cause of the present poverty in China.
The West were controlling the ports of China, leaving it very poor as they were receiving profits for all of China’s trade.
When it comes to who is to blame, there are a number of people who share the responsibility. Deng Xiaping is one of these people; he encouraged people to get rich, not thinking about his actions thoroughly before going through with them. This caused disasters such as the popularity imbalance, which has affected China a great deal, even today. Deng however did reduce China’s population a great deal, bringing it down to its 1,28 billion today, meaning that his actions have had some success. He introduced capitalism into China, breaking free of its years of communism and poverty in all areas. Although Deng reduced China’s popularity, he managed to create an even greater imbalance of wealth for China than it had been before he arrived. Deng is therefore responsible for the imbalance of wealth, because his plan for decreasing the wealth imbalance failed.
Why are some parts of China so rich while other parts are so poor?
It could be argued that Mao is far more responsible for making China poor than Deng is. Deng managed to make some people better off, while Mao failed to get rid of poverty in China. Mao did not realistically plan ahead for the long-term consequences of his actions, which is why his plans did not work. He took communism far too seriously, trying to drain the country of all capitalism, which is unrealistic and impossible: there is always going to be someone better off than the rest. Although Mao thought that he was doing the right thing in trying to make China rich and communist, his plans and actions led to terrible consequences. He ruled as a dictator without accepting advice or criticism, which might have avoided some of the crises that occurred. China is still suffering from the damage caused by Mao. Millions of people were killed in the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ also the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ and the majority of the adults today are uneducated.
However, China’s problems pre-date the C20th. Deng and Mao were trying to get rid of the problems that China faced after centuries of rule by Dynasties and Emperors. In 1850 the population of China was twice that of the whole of Europe. China had withdrawn from the rest of the world, becoming insular and avoiding contact with other countries. It had been due to the arrogance of the Emperors to consider that China could stand-alone in the world and be independent, without needing to learn from the rest of the world. Mao Zedong held this attitude centuries later. It is a shame that lessons from the past were not learned, so that the suffering of the people could have been avoided in the 20th century. While the policies of the Emperors and Mao caused great hardship, Deng has succeeded in making some people wealthy, however the responsibility for the wealth imbalance of China today lies with him.