How china became so powerful

the world's factory

 Back in old days, this part of the world used to be the economic super power of the planet. The dynasties discovered everything from compass, from printing to making paper, gunpowder. They would make huge expeditions around the globe. This is China, the middle kingdom, right next to India.

Around the 1800's that's where it started changing. In Europe and the US, a major revolution started taking place(science, machines, weapons, industries). With the new power these countries started to expand to take over large parts of land. China remained a great civilisation, as the west started showing up, knocking on China’s door with their big guns. China couldn’t compete with the large fire power. So China compromised them with their lands(HONG KONG).

The industrial revolution didn’t start in the same way as it did in the west. And in the middle of 1800, China stood in its massive decline. The situation got even worse when it’s neighbour Japan invaded. China’s economy was no way the prosperous middle kingdom but rather a shadow of itself.

As the western economy is striving towards corporations, stock markets. China remains declining. Instead of joining the capitalism party China resisted turning to a one party system.

By the 1970, China was the place of widespread poverty. The prosperous kingdom reached to its rock bottom. That was all about to change.

In the later 1970s, China's new leader Deng Xiaoping. He came into power, hoping to turn around the hundred and fifty years of humiliation. Elsewhere in the region, China’s neighbours had an economy that joined the global economic party that was happening in capitalism. They saw immense miracles that pulled millions out of poverty. Deng specifically went on a visit to Singapore early on in his term, where ethnic Chinese were adopted the free market. He felt inspired, it was time to see that China could rebuild its economy, experimenting with some versions of capitalism. But Deng has to do this carefully, so as not to disturb the one China created as the one party rule. Deng started to work on it, he started with just one small village, Shenzhen. Shenzhen was a village in southern China of just around 30000 people. Xiaoping quoted this part of the country as a central part of the economy, where foreign country could setup and invest in. Because the village is situated next to Hong Kong.

What happened next is a mind blowing economical miracle ever taken place on planet earth. This little sleeping village as the central part of the economy turned from a fishing place to a population of massive ten million people. The average income went from one dollar a day to thirty thousand dollars a year, this started all over China. Soon a bunch of cities designated in China for special economic activity. More and more foreign countries stepped to China for its cheap labours. It became the world factory.

I know the topic is about how China became powerful, to some extent. But it totally forgot what the development left as a mark on the Chinese land. Also, Chinese left the western jobless since their growth in the manufacturing sector. I’m writing all these because the story of the rise of China is often the rise of capitalism all over the world. But what it has taken from you in the name of development. As you see the above graph China is one of the world’s largest emitters of CO2. Development should not be seen as one sided coin there is also another side in it. The development doesn’t mean that it benefits the top 1% of the population.

- dharnish