When did China embrace socialism?
Chinese economic reform
China had had one of the world's largest and most advanced economies prior to the nineteenth century.[1] In the 18th century, Adam Smith claimed China had long been one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, most prosperous and most urbanized countries in the world.[2] The Chinese economy stagnated, beginning in the 16th century[3] and even declined in absolute terms in the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, with a brief recovery in the 1930s.[4]