Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When did China embrace socialism?
The Chinese economic reform (; known in the West as the Opening of China) refers to the program of economic reforms termed "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "socialist market economy" in the People's Republic of China (PRC) which reformists within the Communist Party of China - led by Deng Xiaoping - started in December 1978.
The socialist market economy is seen by the Communist Party of China as an early stage in the development of socialism (this stage is variously called the "primary" or "preliminary" stage of socialism), where public ownership coexists alongside a diverse range of non-public forms of ownership. The Communist Party of China maintains that despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs with public and collective enterprise, China is not a capitalist country because the party retains control over the direction of the country, maintaining its course of socialist development. Proponents of this economic model distinguish it from market socialism as market socialists believe that economic planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective and thus view the market as an integral part of socialism whereas proponents of the socialist market economy view markets as a temporary phase in development of a fully planned economy.
The Communist Party of China and the government of China advocate socialist patriotism. The Communist Party of China describes the policy of socialist patriotism as the following: "Socialist patriotism has three levels. At the first level, individuals should subordinate their personal interests to the interests of the state. At the second level, individuals should subordinate their personal destiny to the destiny of our socialist system. At the third level, individuals should subordinate their personal future to the future of our communist cause." The PRC portrays the Communist government as the embodiment of the will of the Chinese people.
Since the revolution in 1949, China has devoted most of its investments and administrative energy to the industrial sector. Generally, the agricultural sector received special attention only when the leaders perceived that the sector was beginning to restrain China's overall economic development. Agricultural output basically kept pace with the growth of population but did not expand fast enough to raise living standards. Per capita consumption of grains, fibers, edible oil, sugar, fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs, and dairy products remained low. The value of goods generated by the agricultural sector has grown, but not as fast as output generated by other sectors in the economy. In 1949 about half of the country's output came from the agricultural sector. This ratio dropped to 41 percent by 1955, declined to 31 percent by 1965, and fell another few percentage points in 1975 to 25 percent. But agricultural reforms initiated in the early 1980s brought a rise in agriculture to 33 percent of GDP in 1985. At the same time, more than 60 percent of the national labor force was employed in agriculture.
In 1950, when the Korean War broke out, Zhou Enlai — having been petitioned by Zheng's Chinese wife, Ding Xuesong — personally wrote to Kim Il Sung requesting that Zheng return to work in China. Kim agreed; and, in 1950, Zheng took Chinese nationality.
China practices a form of democracy that it calls socialist consultative democracy. Socialist Consultative Democracy is the form of democracy that exists in the People's Republic of China, though at least one source says that this form of democracy was created by the Communist Party of China. According to an article on Qiushi Journal, "Consultative democracy was created by the CPC and the Chinese people as a form of socialist democracy. In this sense, consultative democracy represents the grand product of our efforts to enrich and develop Marxist theories on democracy. Socialist consultative democracy exhibits distinctive features as well as unique advantages. Not only representing a commitment to socialism, it carries forward China’s fine political and cultural traditions. Not only representing a commitment to the organizational principles and leadership mode of democratic centralism, it also affirms the role of the general public in democracy. Not only representing a commitment to the leadership of the CPC, it also gives play to the role of all political parties and organizations as well as people of all ethnic groups and all sectors of society".
Eco-socialism has had a minor influence over developments in the environmental policies of what can be called "existing socialist" regimes, notably the People's Republic of China. Pan Yue, Deputy Director of the PRC's State Environmental Protection Administration, has acknowledged the influence of eco-socialist theory on his championing of environmentalism within China, which has gained him international acclaim (including being nominated for the Person of the Year Award 2006 by "The New Statesman", a British current affairs magazine). Yue stated in an interview that, while he often finds eco-socialist theory "too idealistic" and lacking "ways of solving actual problems", he believes that it provides "political reference for China’s scientific view of development", "gives socialist ideology room to expand" and offers "a theoretical basis for the establishment of fair international rules" on the environment.
The nascent People's Republic did not yet control all of the territory of the Republic of China. Mao declared it his goal in 1950 to "liberate" Hainan, Tibet, and Formosa, and while he accomplished that of the first two, the third was interrupted: On 25 June 1950, the forces of North Korea invaded the South unleashing the Korean War. The United States Seventh Fleet was summarily dispatched to protect Formosa from a mainland Red Chinese invasion. Although Mao was apparently unenthusiastic about that war, a Chinese volunteer force entered the Korean War in November.
After three years, the First World War, at first greeted with enthusiastic patriotism, produced an upsurge of radicalism in most of Europe and also as far afield as the United States ("see Socialism in the United States") and Australia. In the Russian revolution of February 1917, workers' councils (in Russian, "soviets") had been formed, and Lenin and the Bolsheviks called for "All power to the Soviets". After the October 1917 Russian revolution, led by Lenin and Trotsky, consolidated power in the Soviets, Lenin declared "Long live the world socialist revolution!". Briefly in Soviet Russia socialism was not just a vision of a future society, but a description of an existing one. The Soviet regime began to bring all the means of production (except agricultural production) under state control, and implemented a system of government through the workers' councils or soviets.
In the late 1920s and the early 1930s, the Soviet Chinese people, like most sizable ethnic groups in the early USSR, had a writing system based on the Latin alphabet developed for them; it was used to publish a number of periodicals. A separate, different, Latin-based writing system was simultaneously developed for the Dungans, who were already considered a separate ethnic group. This was accompanied by a broader campaign to raise literacy among Chinese workers, estimated at just one-third in 1923. By the 1930s, there were ten state elementary schools, one vocational secondary school, one college, and two evening schools using Chinese as their medium of instruction.
The Chinese population in Thailand had risen to 792,000 by 1910. By 1932, approximately 12.2 percent of the population was ethnic Chinese. The corruption of the Qing dynasty and the massive population increase in China, combined with high taxes, caused many families to leave for Thailand in search of work and a better life. Those who came before the First World War came overland or by sailboats called sampams, while after World War II most arrived by steam ship. The earlier tradition of Chinese-Thai intermarriage declined once large numbers of Chinese women immigrated in the early-20th century. New arrivals frequently came as families and resisted assimilation, retaining their Chinese culture and living in all-Chinese areas.
The history of socialism has its origins in the 1789 French Revolution and the changes which it wrought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. "The Communist Manifesto" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed "scientific socialism". In the last third of the 19th century, social democratic parties arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.
At the 13th National Congress, Zhao concluded that the common rightist error when analyzing Chinese development was to question the legitimacy of the revolution and socialist superstructural elements established in its aftermath and that the common leftist error was to believe that you could skip over the primary stage of socialism directly to advanced socialism, a view that Zhao designated as utopian. However, there was a problem; according to official statements, China had an advanced superstructure and a backward productive forces; this went against classical Marxism, which said the superstructure was "solely determined by economic factors"in China the mode of production was determined by the superstructure. All this went against the general notion of Marx' theory of historical materialism, which states that a mode of production is solely grounded on the material base. However, Su and Zhang did not believe these discrepancies had proven the theory wrong; they concluded that historical materialism should be considered "a scientific methodology for the analysis of the general trend", not a universal law that explained former and future historical processes. According to Su and Zhang, instead of viewing one factor—economy—as dominant, as was previously done, one should analyze how all factors interact with each other, especially the effects of the superstructure on the rest of society. In their view, superstructural elements "played an obvious role in China's 'leap' from semifeudalism to socialism". Socialism in China was safeguarded by the CPC and its commitment to Marxist ideology.
Most observers believed that the People's Republic of China (PRC) would have preferred to see Chen Shui-bian replaced by an administration less sympathetic to Taiwan independence and more in favor of Chinese reunification. However, some observers believed that the PRC cared less about who became the President of the ROC, than that this person establish economic linkages which Beijing believes would bind Taiwan irrevocably to the Mainland.
Sun Yat-sen (; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was the founding father of the Republic of China. The provisional first president of the Republic of China, Sun was a Chinese medical doctor, writer, philosopher, Georgist, calligrapher, and revolutionary. As the foremost pioneer and first leader of a Republican China, Sun is referred to as the "Father of the Nation" in the Republic of China (ROC) and the "forerunner of democratic revolution" in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Sun played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty (the last imperial dynasty of China) during the years leading up to the Xinhai Revolution. He was appointed to serve as Provisional President of the Republic of China when it was founded in 1912. He later co-founded the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China), serving as its first leader. Sun was a uniting figure in post-Imperial China, and he remains unique among 20th-century Chinese politicians for being widely revered amongst the people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
The Republic of China, established in 1912, set up four more provinces in Inner Mongolia and two provinces in historic Tibet, bringing the total to 28. In 1931, Ma Zhongying established Hexi in the northern parts of Gansu but the ROC never acknowledged the province. However, China lost four provinces with the establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria. After the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, China re-incorporated Manchuria as 10 provinces, and assumed control of Taiwan as a province. As a result, the Republic of China in 1946 had 35 provinces. Although the Republic of China now only controls one province (Taiwan), and some islands of a second province (Fujian), it continues to formally claim all 35 provinces (including those that no longer form part of the area of the People's Republic of China).
After the collapse of a united China under the Han dynasty in 220 due in large part to the Yellow Turban and the Five Pecks of Rice rebellions, China eventually coalesced into the Three Kingdoms. Of these, Cao Wei was the strongest, followed by Eastern Wu and Shu Han, but they were initially in a relatively stable formation. After a 249 coup by Sima Yi, the Sima family essentially controlled Cao Wei and the conquest of Shu by Wei rapidly followed.
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite of Earth in the history of mankind.
The bilateral relations between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (, ) have been turbulent, despite their common Sinospheric and socialist background. Centuries of conquest by modern China's imperial predecessor have given Vietnam an entrenched suspicion of Chinese attempts to dominate it. Though the PRC assisted North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, relations between the two nations soured following Vietnam's reunification in 1975. China and Vietnam fought a prolonged border war from 1979 to 1990, but have since worked to improve their diplomatic and economic ties. However, the two countries remain in dispute over territorial issues in the South China Sea. China and Vietnam share a 1,281-kilometre border. A 2014 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed 84% of Vietnamese were concerned that territorial disputes between China and neighbouring countries could lead to a military conflict.
Prior to the establishment of the First Republic in 1948, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea established in Shanghai in September 1919 as the continuation of several governments proclaimed in the aftermath of March 1st Movement earlier that year coordinated Korean people's resistance against Japan during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The legitimacy of the Provisional Government has been recognised and succeeded by South Korea in the latter's original Constitution of 1948 and the current Constitution of 1988. Nine people have served twenty-four terms as Heads of State (with varying titles) of the Provisional Government between September 1919 and August 1948.
Mao Zedong was the first to hold the office of State Chairman. He was elected at the founding session of the National People's Congress in 1955. At the 2nd NPC in 1959, Mao was succeeded by Liu Shaoqi, first Vice Chairman of the Communist Party. Liu was reelected as State Chairman at the 3rd NPC in Jan 1965. However, in 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and by August 1966 Mao and his supporters succeeding in removing Liu from his position as party Vice Chairman. A few months later Liu was apparently placed under house arrest, and after a prolonged power struggle the 12th Plenum of the 8th Communist Party Congress stripped Liu Shaoqi of all his party and non-party positions on 31 October 1968, including the post of State Chairman. This was in violation of the Constitution, which required a vote by the NPC to remove the State Chairman.
The term "socialism with Chinese characteristics" was added to the General Program of the party's constitution at the 12th National Congress, without a definition of the term. At the 13th National Congress, held in 1987, Zhao Ziyang, the CCP General Secretary, claimed that socialism with Chinese characteristics was the "integration of the fundamental tenets of Marxism with the modernization drive in China" and was "scientific socialism rooted in the realities of present-day China". By this time the CCP believed that China was in the primary stage of socialism, and therefore needed market relations to develop into a socialist society. Two years earlier, Su had tried to internationalize the term "primary stage of socialism" by claiming that socialism contained three different production phases. China was currently in the first phase, while the Soviet Union and the remaining Eastern Bloc countries were in the second phase. Because China was in the primary stage of socialism, Zhao argued that in "[China] for a long time to come, we shall develop various sectors of the economy, always ensuring the dominant position of the public sector". Further, some individuals should be allowed to become rich "before the objective of common prosperity [pure communism] is achieved". Lastly, during the primary stage of socialism, planning would no longer be the primary means of organization of the economy. Upon hearing this remark, Chen Yun, a cautious reformer and the second-most powerful politician in China, walked out of the meeting.
Deng argued that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that the duty of the party was to perfect "socialism with Chinese characteristics." This interpretation of Chinese Marxism reduced the role of ideology in economic decision-making and emphasized policies that had been proven to be empirically effective, stressing the need to "seek truth from facts". Rejecting Mao's idealistic, communitarian values but not necessarily the values of Marx and Lenin, Deng emphasized that socialism did not mean shared poverty (thus repudiating the Gang of Four's slogan "We would rather be poor under socialism than rich under capitalism.") Unlike Hua Guofeng, Deng believed that no policy should be rejected out of hand simply because it had not been associated with Mao. Unlike more conservative leaders such as Chen Yun, Deng did not object to policies on the grounds that they were similar to those found in capitalist nations. He merely stated that these ideas were part of the common heritage of mankind and not specifically tied to either capitalism or socialism.
Xue Muqiao introduced the term "underdeveloped socialism" in his book "China's Socialist Economy". The book was written in the orthodox Marxist–Leninist framework enunciated by Joseph Stalin in "Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R." (1952). Xue wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases and for China to reach an advanced form of socialism it had to focus on developing the productive forces. He proposed a theory in which the basic laws of economic growth were those in which "the relations of production must conform to the level of the productive forces". Similarly to Stalin, Xue considered the productive forces to be primary and that this was a fundamental universal law of economics. Unlike Stalin, Xue believed there were principles that guided the socialist transition, the key one being the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work"; this principle would guide socialist development, even when China had reached advanced socialism, and would be replaced with "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" only when there existed general abundance. Xue based his arguments upon the economic policies pursued during the Cultural Revolution, which he believed had led to "the most severe setbacks and heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the state and the people since the founding of the People's Republic".
The concept of a primary stage of socialism was conceived before China introduced economic reforms. In the early 1950s, economists Yu Guangyuan, Xue Muqiao and Sun Yefang raised the question of socialist transformation in which China's economy of low productive force was in a transitional period, a position which Mao Zedong endorsed briefly until 1957. When discussing the necessity of commodity relations at the 1st Zhengzhou Conference (2–10 November 1958), for example, Mao—the Chairman of the Communist Party of China's Central Committeesaid that China was in the "initial stage of socialism". However, Mao never elaborated on the idea and his successors were left to do this.