Apart from restoring the country’s unity, the central task facing the PRC was industrialization. To this end, it engaged in a huge project of land redistribution and the creation of large communes, from which it extracted considerable agricultural surpluses in the form of peasant taxes, which it then used to invest in the construction of a heavy industry sector. Its economic policy marked a major break with past practice, eschewing the use of the market and relying instead on the state and central planning in the manner of the Soviet Union. Despite the wild vicissitudes of Mao’s rule, China achieved an impressive annual growth rate of 4.4 per cent between 1950 and 1980, [294] more than quadrupling the country’s GDP [295] and more than doubling its per capita GDP. [296] This compared favourably with India, which only managed to increase its GDP by less than three times during the same period and its per capita GDP by around 50 per cent. [297] China ’s social performance was even more impressive. It enhanced its Human Development Index (a measure of a country’s development using a range of yardsticks including per capita GDP, living standards, education and health) [298] by four and a half times (in contrast to India’s increase of three and a half times) as a result of placing a huge emphasis on education, tackling illiteracy, promoting equality (including gender) and improving healthcare. [299] This strategy also enabled China to avoid some of the problems that plagued many other Asian, African and Latin American countries, such as widespread poverty in rural areas, huge disparities of wealth between rich and poor, major discrepancies in the opportunities for men and women, large shanty towns of unemployed urban dwellers, and poor educational and health provision. [300] The price paid for these advances, in terms of the absence or loss of personal freedoms and the death and destruction which resulted from some of Mao’s policies, was great, but they undoubtedly helped to sustain popular support for the government.
The first phase of Communist government marked a huge turnaround in China ’s fortunes. During these years, the groundwork was laid for industrialization and modernization, the failure of which had haunted the previous century of Chinese history. The first phase of the PRC, from 1949 to 1978, reversed a century of growing failure, restored unity and stability to the country, and secured the kind of economic take-off that had evaded previous regimes. Despite the disastrous violations and excesses of Mao, the foundations of China ’s extraordinary transformation were laid during the Maoist era. The 1949 Revolution proved, unlike that of 1911, to be one of China ’s most important historical turning points.
