The People's Republic of China (1949–2005)

1 October 1949, declared by Mao Zedong from Tiananmen Gate, Beijing.

Law confiscating landlords' land and redistributing it to poor and landless peasants, enforced through public struggle sessions.

They made peasants active participants in destroying the landlord class, tying their loyalty to the new regime, not just redistributing land.

Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries (1950-51), Three-Antis Campaign (1951), Five-Antis Campaign (1952).

Mao's invitation for open criticism of the CCP ('let a hundred flowers bloom'); intended to improve the party but produced a flood of unexpected criticism by spring 1957.

The 1957 crackdown following the Hundred Flowers Campaign that purged over 500,000 critics labelled 'rightists', through labour camps and job dismissals.

Soviet-style economic plan investing heavily in heavy industry (steel, coal, machinery) alongside collectivization of agriculture; industrial output roughly doubled.

Mao's Second Five-Year Plan aiming to rapidly industrialize and collectivize China at once, using people's communes and backyard steel furnaces; ended in catastrophic famine.

Exaggerated harvest reports led to excessive grain requisitioning while labour was diverted from farming to steel-making and public works, leaving villages without enough food.

Historians estimate 15 to 45 million deaths, mostly from starvation.

Banned arranged marriage, child betrothal and concubinage; gave women the right to choose a spouse, own property and initiate divorce.

First Five-Year Plan (1953-57): measured, Soviet-style planning, real industrial growth. Great Leap Forward (1958-61): rapid mass mobilization, exaggerated reporting, led to the Great Chinese Famine.

An alliance between Mao's China and Stalin's USSR providing loans, weapons and technical advisers — the high point of Sino-Soviet friendship.

Mao's anger at Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation speech (1956) and his policy of "peaceful coexistence" with the West, which Mao saw as a betrayal of revolution.

Chinese and Soviet troops clashed in a border war, showing the Sino-Soviet alliance had completely collapsed.

Both sides had strategic reasons: China wanted a counterweight to Soviet pressure after the Sino-Soviet split; the USA wanted leverage over the USSR and a way out of Vietnam.

The agreement signed during Nixon's visit that restored Sino-American diplomatic and trade contact, though it did not resolve the Taiwan issue.

Jiang Qing (Mao's widow), Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen — radicals blamed for Cultural Revolution excesses; arrested by Hua Guofeng in October 1976.

Hua Guofeng's policy that whatever Mao decided must be upheld and whatever Mao instructed must be followed — it tied Hua to Mao's legacy and left him vulnerable to reformers.

He was rehabilitated in 1977 after two earlier purges, built alliances with veteran officials, and won the policy argument for economic reform by the Third Plenum in December 1978.

Deng Xiaoping's reform programme covering agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defence.

A Deng-era reform letting Chinese families farm their own plots and sell surplus produce for profit, replacing Mao's failed communes and raising agricultural output.

Areas like Shenzhen where Deng allowed foreign investment and market-style economic rules to operate, driving China's growth from the 1980s onward.

The army cleared Tiananmen Square by force, killing an unknown number of protesters — it showed Deng's reforms meant economic opening but never multi-party democracy.

Party leader in Shanghai promoted to General Secretary in 1989 after handling protests without bloodshed; he continued Deng's economic opening, securing China's path to WTO membership (2001).