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China's rise - how did it happen?


Well-known member
Ok. Here's the thing.

Use of this thread: China's industrialization.

So anyone that is familiar with chinese recent history, and can tell me how fast China has modernized and industrialized? Cause I myself aren't very sure.


Bean Daddy
Not very fast considering the Tongzhi Emperor began a series of efforts to strengthen China including some industrialization which began in 1861, seven years before Japan's Meiji Restoration kicked off Japan's rise to power. The first Sino-Japanese War in 1894 showed how Japan's efforts to industrialize were working while China on the other hand had alot debt and little to show for it. It continued to industrialize in the south east and north east though a major effort to industrialize would not begin till the PROC took over in 1949. Though it's early efforts were well a failure. The Great Leap Forward being a example of this as it in part caused the death of 18 to 56 million people and shrank the economy of the PROC from 1958 to 1962. It was only after Mao death in 1976 the arrest of the Gang of 4 and the adoption of the "Reform and Opening Up" policy in December 1978 which began a series of incremental reforms and opening up to foreign investment. So from 1979 onward did industrialization in China really take off.

China helped fueled this with massive loans and various state capitalist policies. Fast forward today and China is the second largest economy in the world and one of the back bones to global economy recovery after the 08 financial crisis. So of course while China has had a major rise in the last forty years I have my doubts that the good economic times are going to last for China.


Well-known member
Communism happened back when communism still meant heavy industrialization and power self sufficiency at all costs.

Cost being tens of millions of dead but yeah you get the point I believe.

Mark Poe

The majestic cock
The reptilian globalist new world order want an industrial base to build up their forces for the final assault on freedom and justice, and what better place to do that than the heart* of oriental despotism?

*well, discount version, close enough.
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Aaron Fox

SB's Minor Junker Descendant and Hunter of Nazis
Here is the thing about China, if it's rulers really want to, they can and will do anything to do it. China was constantly fucked over by much of Europe (particularly the British), and that was mostly due to the Qing Dynasty being unable to realize that if they don't change then they'll get killed, which was what basically happened.

Japan is different due to the fact that the Tokugawa Shogunate knew that the day will come that Europeans will try to fuck them over, the Opium Wars simply accelerated their plans. Then the US came in and basically bust into the place with their gunboats...
... forcing the Tokugawa leadership to start a crash industrialization program that led to the Meji Restoration.

That's a major difference between China and Japan. China's institutions and leaders couldn't change, Japan's leaders were preparing for the day practically since the aftermath of the Waring States Period and the ill-fated Korean Campaign with Dutch studies and were far more adaptable than their mainland counterparts (as in, Japan after the Waring States Period was so enthusiastic with guns that they were one of the most gun-heavy armies on the fucking planet).


We learned this in global class 2 years back, but i forgot it all.( There is a big "forget" curve in high school, american ones at least.


Well-known member
Mao died. The RussoChinese Schism has already occured.

People that were not ideoologue morons took power and realized the unique historical opportunity.

They had the biggest population in the planet, plenty of industry as result of the previous decades crash programs and an international climate ready to do anything to have China stay away from Soviet Union.

So they grabbed the opportunity with both hands, feet and teeth and here we are.


Cutest Mod
Why don't you ask someone who is currently studying about Chinese politics and have read books about Chinese industrialization tell you about it?

The answer is complex. And mostly starts after Mao's death. I guess everyone here knows about Deng Xiaoping and his reformist policies, setting up Coastal Development Areas and Special Economic Zones with lower taxes and less red tape. What is less known (I think at least) is the role the US and the rural Chinese population plays in China's industrialization.

Let's discuss the United States first, It's the 70s, cold war's happening, Nixon's in office, and America just lost Vietnam. American presence in Asia just took a massive hit after the whole blunder, lots of American soldiers dying, lots of internal tension within the US, primarily with the public against the war in Vietnam, AND the USA just finished signing off the Civil rights and Voting rights act. Not to mention, Nixon is busy spearheading a policy of detente. So increased US interventionism in the world, ESPECIALLY after the debacle that is Vietnam, ain't happening for quite sometime.

But there's this thing called the Soviet Union, and the US, seeing an opportunity, and also realizing It's current situation, switches It's foreign policy to engage China, engage China to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding it's presence in Asia. And China fits this role, together with Japan. The USA, China, and Japan forms a sort of 'strategic triangle' to fight the USSR in Asia, not fight literally, but prevent further Soviet encroachment into Asia after Vietnam.

China's industrialization is partly the result of the loosening of tensions between China and the USA. The USA formally recognizes China into the UN P5 (kinda but not really shafting Taiwan), American investment (US investment is not the absolute majority, but it forms a sizable part of the industrialization of China, no doubt about it) boomed, American businesses set up shop in the coastal provinces, and the Chinese economy began to grow. This all culminated in China's acceptance into the WTO as an MFN nation, roughly in 2000-2001. THAT is the point where China's economy began to grow, and grow really, really fast.

But, all this wouldn't be to such an extent if not for the massive, and I really do mean MASSIVE migration of rural Chinese workers into the Urban Provinces, searching for jobs and new opportunities, for the Rural Chinese, decades of Cultural Revolutions, Great Leap Forwards and Famines left them with not a lot of choice, the moment a factory opens up and is looking for employees, it is the rural Chinese that leapt onto the occasion and worked their butts off producing various goods for China to export. We are talking a mass migration in the hundreds of millions, so many lives moving into coastal provinces, a very notable example of this is Shenzhen. China's silicon valley. Just take a look at the satellite imagery of the damn city.

This is the Pearl River Delta in 1973

Same Area in 2017

Mass migration coupled with investment from overseas, American foreign policy shifts, as well as pretty good timing of Mao's death allowed all this to happen. I'm sure some details are missed. But this is the general overview of how China industrialized.
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