World

The Futuristic China’s Hegemony By Bisma Ijaz Being already living the future with its unprecedented economic reforms which the rest of the world strives for The economic rise of China is the most significant development of the 21st century that has had a profound impact on the global political-economic order. In 2016, China overrode the United States as the largest economy on Earth. Over the years, the US’s share of the world economy is shrinking over time while China’s share is growing rapidly. According to IMF Data Mapper, as of October 2023, China made up 18.82% of the Entire World Economy while the USA only made up around 15.42%. This is a historic transition of China’s ruling the global economy. But when you look at a country’s GDP, it doesn’t tell you clearly about the composition of its economy like what kind of global impact it has. So, to measure a country’s economy in a better way is not simply possible through its size of all goods and services production in GDP, but rather its global manufacturing contribution. As per the OECD TiVA database of 2023 update, China’s economic growth is incredibly impressive as it has become the world manufacturing superpower representing more than one-third of the entire world’s gross production of manufacturing goods. So, it’s evident that China now produces more than the United States, Japan, Germany, India, South Korea, Italy and France combined. Here is a question that comes to mind How did China which had only a 2% contribution in global GDP with an exceeding poverty rate of 90% in 1978, achieve such prominent economic development in just 45 years? Despite not having natural resources like Russia and the US possess who built their economy on these resources, how was it able to become the world’s biggest economy? Let’s have a look at the background of this rising global power of the 21st century. The People’s Republic of China was founded on 1 October 1949 by Communist Leader Mao Zedong after the Chinese Revolution. The revolutionary party Chinese Communist Party CCP had a strong hold on the entire country including political and economic sectors. Mao Zedong ruled China for almost 3 decades until he died in 1976. During his tenure, the country was under dictatorship which he used to call ‘People’s Democratic Dictatorship.’ In 1958, Mao launched ‘the Great Leap Forward’ campaign, aiming to bring social and economic transformation to the country. Its central idea was to bring two major policies ‘Land Re-distribution’ and ‘industrialization’ to grow the economy. By land redistribution, CCP took the lands from landowners and distributed them among the farmers. After that, it collectivized agriculture, and created agriculture cooperatives, so that all farmers could work together on the same land. He forced the workers and farmers to do the labor work. Whereas the ownership of those lands was in the hands of the government. Secondly, for industrialization, the government built large-scale steel industries and also encouraged the people to have their small-scale steel furnaces in their backyards to produce steel on a local level too. These policies were made to develop China economically but yielded unfavorable outcomes. The local-level steel furnaces were producing low-quality steel which led to the resources being wasted. On the other hand, lacking profit-sharing opportunities and private ownership, the farmers didn’t have any incentive to enhance crop production. Because ultimately the grown crop had to be handed to the government which resulted in a huge decline in productivity. During 1958-61, the grain production dropped down by 15% in the entire country. Mao’s poorly planned policies and experiments resulted in massive failure that caused the deadliest famine in human history. Around 20 to 40 million people died in this Great Chinese Famine. One of the causes of famine was The Four Evils campaign particularly targeted four pests for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The Sparrow Extermination’s purpose was to increase food production and to eliminate sparrows as they ate grains from the crop field. This decision produced more pests and insects’ growth that were supposed to be eaten by the sparrow in the ecosystem. This massive ecological imbalance made the food shortage worsen. Mao’s unchecked so-called masterstroke policies caused millions of deaths due to starvation.  You may be interested in reading other articles: The Dying Earth, Global Inflation, The lasting impact of Music, Middle East Economy, and Anton’s Invention Conquering the World. After such severe failure, the Communist Leader came under criticism from the public and party leaders. Large-scale destruction, a 90% poverty rate, and famine gave birth to rebel forces within the Chinese Communist Party CCP. To revive the nation’s revolutionary values, Mao provoked another campaign named ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ in 1966 and launched his local army of Mao’s loyal soldiers named ‘Red Guards’ obeying Mao’s call to ‘bombard the party’s headquarters to target and publicly humiliate who opposed Mao’s ideology while discriminated them as traitors. They even dismissed the rebel party leader. This chaos resulted in the deaths of almost 2 million people. Around 50 million people lost their lives due to Mao’s policies. He died in 1976 due to poor health. Deng’s Revolutionary Reforms The Agricultural Reforms: Despite having a massive workforce, China didn’t have educated and skilled workers due to Mao’s policy of forced labor and the Cultural Revolution’s specific target of schools and universities. Deng was able to see his workforce’s potential, so rather than sending them into big industries that demand exceptional skills, he first trained the workforce at the agricultural level. He decentralized the government’s role released the government control over land and encouraged private farming. This decision gave the workers an incentive to yield more crop production. Unlike Mao’s rule, now they could give tax to the government and could sell the rest of the grains in the market. This boost in the agriculture sector pulled the country out of poverty and raised farmers’ income. This income rise compelled the workers to invest in commercial crops like cotton and sugarcane.