In December 1978, at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the economic reforms of the \u201creformist\u201d and architect of the great turn, Deng Xiaoping, were approved, which proved to be decisive for the future of the country and the entire world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deng, who had been expelled and exiled during Mao\u2019s Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s, had prevailed over the hard-core \u201cGang of Four\u201d and imposed the \u201cgreat change\u201d, \u201cmarket socialism\u201d, as he called it, adopting liberal economic principles and a system of incentives for the production of goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It allowed private enterprises to operate, opened the door to foreign investment, gave farmers the ability to determine the volume and prices of their products, and gave the country’s regions the opportunity to compete with each other, but maintained strong central management of the economy, particularly in public goods, through strict and disciplined, in terms of their effectiveness, five-year economic development plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, based on the doctrine of “white cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice” and with the strong conviction that “only if we increase our productive capacity will we be able to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist system”, he imposed a wave of liberalization and strong reforms that was destined to change the course of history and make China today an industrial, technological, economic, commercial and defense superpower, capable of competing not only with the USA, but also with the entire West, now having a decisive influence on both geopolitics and even politics, through competition and the evaluation of the effectiveness of systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Student Uprising<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The first wave of Chinese liberalization was temporarily halted in 1989, when the great student uprising broke out and its violent and bloody suppression was approved by Deng himself, with the invasion of armored vehicles in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Immediately afterwards, however, a second, stronger wave of economic reforms followed, which included the privatization of a number of state-owned industries, while maintaining the monopoly in the credit and energy sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main characteristic of the second wave was the absolute coordination of all the individual factors and contributors to economic development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teng died in 1997, but his successors continued to move forward based on the goals and principles he imposed. With China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, Chinese growth was rapid in all sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Globalization<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That choice coincided with the great wave of globalization, with the liberalization of international trade and the liberalization of capital movements, which, combined with the huge reserves of unfulfilled domestic demand, multiplied Chinese growth. Until then, the Chinese economy was distinguished for the production of cheap products, taking advantage of low wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the low cost of production attracted a multitude of multinational giants, including technology giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The transfer of capital, technology and production capabilities provided a unique boost and since then Chinese production has changed course, reaching 2025 to lead in all sectors, reminiscent of the United States of America after World War II in terms of production dynamism. China had the opportunity to grow at a rate of 10% per year for more than three decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Education<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n During this time, the centrally managed economy fully absorbed the technological achievements of the West, over time developing its own through a network of sophisticated public universities and state-funded research centers, resulting in a leading role in all critical productive sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 150,000 well-trained engineers graduate from public Chinese universities each year, leading the way in the production of unique infrastructure projects \u2013 recently, construction began on a huge hydroelectric dam, costing $146 billion, on the Brahmaputra River, which crosses China, India and Bangladesh and is considered the largest engineering project on the planet \u2013, in the development of transportation, telecommunications, power generation, high-speed railways, aerospace, biotechnology and pharmaceutical production, automation, robotics, semiconductor production and cutting-edge artificial intelligence mechanisms, which directly compete with the rich and expensive versions of Silicon Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leading<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, China dominates the production of electric cars, almost monopolizes the production of modern batteries, controls the international production and trade of rare earths, which are critical for new technological goods, automation and robots have been introduced into a multitude of productive and commercial activities, and at the same time it is leading the green transition by supplying almost the entire planet with solar panels and wind turbines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, its defense industry is developing rapidly, its 5th generation fighter jets compete with American ones, its missile systems surpass Western anti-aircraft batteries, its new aircraft carriers have nothing to envy from the most advanced American ones, and through them it has a dynamic influence on geopolitics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, it maintains a central position in trade relations with 120 countries, which allows it to promote transactions in local currencies, to lead de-dollarization efforts through the BRICS and to easily deal with any pressure exerted by Donald Trump’s tariff policy. Through the “One Belt, One Road” scheme, it has a catalytic effect on the development of Central Asia, with investments and the multitude of projects and trade agreements it increases its influence in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa and, defending open and free trade, builds alliances with Canadians, Australians and Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would not be an exaggeration to say that China, with its gigantic growth, is changing the global balance. When Deng Xiaoping’s great reform began almost five decades ago, few expected its result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During this time, the once backward rural country has fought poverty on a scale of 1.5 billion people, created a middle class of about 500 million, won the bet on development without sacrificing the basic goods of education, health and social welfare, now excels productively and technologically, its cities are prosperous and its image internationally is improving, as it has not participated in a war for almost fifty years, but rather, as its leaders say, has chosen the peaceful path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly, the start of Chinese reform almost coincided in time with the great turn of the West towards neoliberalism. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher won the prime ministership in Great Britain and two years later, in January 1981, Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency of the USA. The neoliberal doctrine of open and self-regulating markets prevailed in the West at that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cone-way street\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cone-way street\u201d dominated. However, its effectiveness is questioned by the \u201cChinese miracle\u201d, by this alloy of centrally managed disciplined economy and open market, which however defended public goods and never denied them. It is no coincidence that today it also treats Artificial Intelligence as a public good, favoring open source schemes, accessible to all, against Western commercialized models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the West, there are increasing numbers of those who, despite criticizing China for its democratic deficits and the party\u2019s monopoly, now look favorably on the other path, that of the coordinated, disciplined and organized allocation of investment resources by the state in good cooperation with the private sector. This is the political effect of Chinese efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In December 1978, at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the economic reforms of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[836,3],"tags":[161,1593,184],"class_list":["post-25407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-geopolitical","category-geopolitical","tag-china","tag-technology","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25409,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25407\/revisions\/25409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}