chinese economy under deng xiaoping

"It matters not whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice."
Deng Xiaoping

Paper
DENG XIAOPING : The chinese reform
Elmahdi Fathi : 2014-81611

China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second
World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader
Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a market operated economy and by the 21st century the economy has improved tremendously, improving the standard of living as well as giving freedom of speech, China has now adapted to a successful socialist market economy in which the government still has a large contribution in terms of corporate decisions.

For Deng Xiaoping ,the best way to build a better China was to offer better living conditions as soon as possible, to give people the level of morale they need for further development. At that time, he realized that China’s economic need to reform; he found very effecient ways to reform the China’s economic. His goals were to open up the
China’s market to the outside world, breaking down the collective farms, getting rid of

state-run enterprises and providing more jobs for people in the industry. He found that the most important thing was the modernization of agriculture because 80% of the population derived their living primarily from agricultural production. The new contract responsibility system allowed farmers to rent land for individual farming families.
Farmers had to sell a certain percentage of their crops to the State with the State’s price, and they could sell the remaining for their own profits. This system had helped the rural income to be doubled. It marked a successful modernization of agriculture.
Besides the modernization of agriculture, in the Deng era, there was a shift from central planning and reliance on heavy industry to consumer-oriented industries and reliance on foreign trade and investment. Some of the new factories were purchased from other countries; some of them were built with local resources. Capitalist enterprise was accepted in industry. People were allowed to invest in workshop, hire people to work for them, and earn profits from the work that was done by the employees if they had the funds to do so. Foreign investors were allowed to do the same. They built factories and used cheap Chinese labors to produce goods for export. Deng had set up a successfully solution that lowered the rate of unemployment Chinese and to improve the industrial market. These new factories and workshops not only provided a lot of jobs for unemployed Chinese, but also to have modern machines that was brought in by the foreign investors

and

Chinese

workers had opportunities to be trained to use it.

Feeling this was not enough to boost the economic up, Deng loaned money from IMF and the World Bank to upgrade machinery and establish new manufacturing and industrial development.He opened a total of five towns and villages and allowed foreign investors to build factories and hire Chinese to work for them. It might not be the best way to reform the economic as a whole, but it played an important role because it benefited the
Chinese workers, the investors, and the Chinese government. During the 1980s, Deng promoted the “open door” policy to encourage foreign investment and to trade with the world. China needed larger quantities of raw materials to fuel its industrial growth so they signed contracts for minerals, timer, and so forth. It had not only provided China with raw materials that were needed, but also improved the relations with other neighbor counties and the US. China’s economic growth would be much better if the relationship between China and other counties was relaxed than a tense international environment. With the ‘open door’ policy, China boosted the publications and entertainment of all kinds. New brands of clothing appeared in China. a number of

privateowned restaurants and roadside vendors increased along with the appearance of disco in big cities.
These new changes in the Chinese society showed that it was a sign of change for the bet ter, and the Chinese economy kept on growing.

What social, cultural and political impacts has the economic development produced?
With the growth of the economic development, there were some impacts that it produced that affected the social, cultural and political. As China opened its door for foreign investors to invest in China and to trade with China, a lot of officials found opportunities to enrich themselves and their friends in the changed of economic. embezzling state property, smuggling Western-made products, and taking bribes were major issues in the Chinese government. As China’s economy started growing, large and small-scale corruption continued at faster pace. Not only corruptions of the officials, but there was also other crimes such as prostitution and drug trafficking also reemerged along with the economic reforms. Even though the people at that time knew that the punishment could be death penalty, but they were still willing to take the risks because the profits of these illegal activities were very high. But as the China’s economy rose, people expected to have a better life. So that it became very difficult for men in poorer ar ea to find a wife.
With the modernization of industry, a lot of factories were built so that a lot of men left their families to get a job in the factory because they could get higher paid working in the factories. As a result, the numbers of people employed in agriculture declined from
70% to 50% that left most of the women and children to manage the family’s leased farmland. This would create the imbalance between the number of men and women in the urban and the rural areas at first sight. While urban incomes rose, the rural incomes changed slowly. There were still areas that did not have electricity supply, school or health care. And the farmers also believed that they worked hard for the money, but they had to pay taxes and fees, which labeled miscellaneous fees. Most of the money went into pockets of lazy and corrupts officials. To escape from the harsh conditions in rural areas, young women started to find work in the city and they were willing to work with short-term contract and low salaries. This had made the population in the urban to increase rapidly, while the populations declined.

Since China had opened its door to the West, China boosted the demand for publications and entertainments of all kind, such as films and books about the Cultural Revolution, new styles of clothing… People enjoyed these new things and they looked at it as a new and better stage of their lives. The living conditions of Chinese at that time started to get better because they could get a job that they were able to feed their families. They enjoyed these little new changes in their lives. There were a lot of little things that had helped to improve people’s lives, but there were some unhealthy activities that were the cause of diseases in China. Some people claimed that China opened its door to the
Western foreigners too widely so that the sales of pornography were increasing more than ever. The sales of pornography and prostitutions together increased the incidences of Chinese people to get sexual transition diseases and AIDS.
As the reforms of the early 1990s deepened, people participated in voluntary spare-time activities that brought pleasure rather than political indoctrination because new forms of entertainment and pastimes emerged .It was clearly to see the emergence of new forms of literature. Younger people increasingly went to discos and clubs at nights with
Western-style rock music. The older people also had their own dancing clubs with traditional dances. There were other new forms of entertainments in the society. One of them was a new form of entertainment of a more educated nature. Children was enrolled in after school activities such as piano, dance or martial art lessons a parents wanted to give their child the opportunit ies and pleasures that they could not have .
How has the change in the Chinese economy affected the relationship between USA and China?
Under Deng’s directions, the relationship between China and the Western countries improved. China greatly expanded its contacts with the United States and Western
Europe after 1976. In 1979, he came to visit the United States to cooperate in military matters if they could do so quietly. After the visit the United States of Deng, the United
States had not only agreed to supply advance equipment for an electronic observation post in Xinjiang, they also were willing to sell nonlethal military equipment to the PRC.
As China opened its door for trading and allowing foreigners to invest in China, the USA decided to ease the restrictions even on advanced technology . This could be considered as a point where China was able to purchase equipment that could use in military for pro

tection purposes.
With its great relationship with Western countries, China accepted the facts that China was behind other countries, so they had to learn from the foreigners. The education exchanges started increasing. There was a very large number of Chinese were going abroad for study. About 9000 or more Chinese were studying just in the United States.
With the exchange education, Chinese students were able to learn about the higher living standard

and

encountered

a

range

of

ideas

that

might

become

profoundly subversive influences.
In the late 1970s, the USA established full diplomatic relations with China and terminated the mutual defense treaty that the USA had signed in 1954. Also, the US opened its markets, and continued to restrict the export to China of technologies having possible military uses. But 1982, Chinese began to distance themselves from the USA to imrove their relations with the Soviet Union. But only a year later, after a substantial loosening of US restrictions on exports to China, the relationship between China and the
USA began to improve again.

Source : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/09/27/china-under-deng-xiaopings-leadership/ http://www.ceibs.edu/ase/Documents/reform.htm