The People’s Republic of China

Abstract

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a one-party authoritarian state that was established in 1949 after Mao Zedong’s communist forces triumphed in a protracted civil war against the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek. The country’s initial political and administrative system borrowed significantly from the Soviet Union. At its heart was a centrally planned economy, a highly centralised and hierarchical political structure dominated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the atomisation of society in order to maintain party control (Saich 2004: 28). The year 1978 marked a significant watershed in the history of the PRC when Deng Xiaoping, emerging victorious from a power struggle within the CCP following Mao’s death in 1976, instigated market reforms that began to gradually dismantle the centrally planned economy while also relaxing to an extent party control over society. The resulting upsurge in economic growth, reflected in an average annual GDP increase of 9.6 per cent from 1979-2004 (Xinhua News Agency 2006), has lifted tens of millions of Chinese out of poverty and helped transform China into a major economic and political force on the world stage. Yet although party-state control has undoubtedly relaxed in the economic and social realms compared with the Maoist era, political reform has proceeded far more cautiously. Hence more than 60 years on from the founding of the PRC, the CCP still dominates politically and there is little sign that its ruling elites are likely to move the country towards anything approaching western liberal democracy.