Timeline of Reform Era, 1978-2011

China's Reform Era — an Introduction

Over the last thirty years, the People’s Republic of China has undergone a series of dramatic economic and social reforms and consequently developed at an unprecedented rate. An estimated 500 million Chinese people have been brought out of poverty during this period, and an increasing number now count themselves among the country’s growing list of millionaires. At the same time, with China’s increasing prominence on the international scene, especially in its relation to its largest trading partner, the United States, the country’s influence on the world is the strongest it has been in over two hundred years. This dynamic promises to be a defining feature for international relations in the 21st century. Examining China’s extraordinary path, by taking into account both changing reform policies and the players behind these reforms, is crucial to understanding contemporary China’s government, culture, and society. This timeline views the reform era (1978-Present) from five different perspectives, placing a wide scope of analysis and reflections on the social impacts this fascinating and critical time period.

Most, if not all, of China’s astonishing successes can be attributed to the complex and penetrating reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping and administered by a loyal team of reform-minded government officials. By the opening day of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, on December 18, 1978, the PRC leadership had already been moving away from the radical ideology of the Cultural Revolution years, which was officially called to an end a few short months before. Mao Zedong had died two years earlier, and Deng Xiaoping, recently reinstated after suffering his second purge, was keen to get the country back on firm ground. A veteran of the Long March and a respected political commander, Deng used his considerable influence to shift the power base away from Mao’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, and bring back innovative and capable cadres who had been dismissed during the political purges of the 1950s and 60s, as well as promote more youthful, progressive government ministers. With this loyal foundation of reformist bureaucrats, including principal players like Zhao Ziyang, the country has marched ahead, rolling out new policies to boost agricultural output, reform education, impact family planning, and provide incentives to people to seek profits. Many pioneering individuals made huge fortunes, inconceivable just a few years earlier, and the national economy has grown by double-digit percentages nearly every year since, surviving relatively unscathed the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the global recession in 2008.

These extraordinary accomplishments have brought with them incredible difficulties that remain a vital but often overlooked feature of China’s rise. An enormous population five times the size of the United States’, overburdened natural resources that could foment environmental catastrophe, corruption within the political system, a widening income gap, and stagnant judicial, political and cultural reforms all pose significant challenges to China’s future social stability and continued prosperity. Runaway inflation in the 1980s largely contributed to fitful national unrest that culminated in the six weeks of protests in Beijing during the spring of 1989. After a period of fiscal stability in the 1990s under the careful watch of Premier Zhu Rongji, inflation continues to be a critical issue today. The conservative backlash following the government crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protestors almost derailed the reform period entirely.

How various Chinese citizens, from entrepreneurs to artists to China’s youth, have reacted to these reforms is an equally fascinating subject of inquiry. There is an undeniable resurgence in cultural pride as evidenced by the exuberant 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the same time, many individual citizens have called for increased political reforms to keep pace with the economic and social reforms, often at considerable risk. Others have turned to alternative communities (i.e. religious communities, online social groups, or civil society groups) to make the most of new social opportunities and address some of the challenges that China faces. In comparison with the previous socialist period, China during the reform era has provided citizens with many more options for social and cultural expression, which can often seem either discordant or invigorating depending on one’s perspective.

Taken together, the successes and challenges resulting from the reforms undertaken over the past thirty years provide a comprehensive framework for approaching and understanding contemporary 21st century China.

The following are suggested resources where you can explore more about the Reform Era in China.

• Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
  From a 1984 speech by Deng Xiaoping to a Japanese delegation in which Deng outlines the ideology for his socialist market economy. Since a capitalist system would be politically unacceptable in a communist government, Deng's classification was a necessary step to moving ahead with his reforms.
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• Charter 08
  Inspired by the 1977 anti-Soviet Czech initiative, Charter 77, Charter 08 was published on 10 December 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. Liu Xiaobo, the jailed 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was one of the authors and original signatories. The document calls for constitutional amendment, greater political freedoms, and social reforms, among other actions.
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• Deng Xiaoping Talks on the Southern Tour
  After the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and in other locations around China, the economic reforms suffered setbacks via conservative resurgence within the government. Deng's 1992 Southern Tour, an important occasion and a turning point, promoted the special economic zones (SEZs) and inspired greater confidence among investors and entrepreneurs, putting the economy back on the path of development.
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• Shanghai Communique
  Jointly issued on February 27, 1972, by the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, this document was one of the first steps to normalizing relations between the two countries.
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• The Fifth Modernization
  This important document, posted on Beijing's Democracy Wall by Wei Jingsheng on December 5, 1978, calls for the inclusion of democracy to the list of the Four Modernizations of industry, agriculture, science and technology, and national defense.
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• Joint Communiqué of the United States of America and the People
  Signed by Deng Xiaoping and President Jimmy Carter and released on January 1, 1979, this joint communique officially established diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. The document also halted official U.S. recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
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December, 1978	3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Communist Party of China Central Committee: Deng Xiaoping successfully challenges Mao Zedong’s chosen successor, Hua Guofeng, becoming paramount leader of China and beginning the economic reforms that mark the start of the Reform Era. Deng focuses the Third Plenary Session on the ‘Four Modernizations’ of industry, agriculture, national defense, and science-technology. Activist lawyer Wei Jingsheng posts his “Fifth Modernization” to the Democracy Wall in Beijing, at a site that had quickly become an area of democratic dissent. The “Fifth Modernization,” a proposed addition to Deng Xiaoping's “Four Modernizations,” incorporated democracy to the list. The Democracy Wall was quickly shut down and Wei Jingsheng would spend the next fifteen years in prison.
January 1, 1979	The United States officially transfers diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China.
1980	Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are opened in 4 strategic coastal areas, including Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou in Guangdong Province, Xiamen in Fujian Province, and the entire island province of Hainan. Authorized by Deng Xiaoping and allocating specific areas with special rules on business and foreign investment, they serve as a controlled experiment in economic reforms.
1981	Premier Zhao Ziyang promotes the Household Responsibility System, previously small scale and experimental, to the national level. Land use rights are distributed to 'households,’ or sets of households, for fifteen year leases, and surplus agricultural output is kept by the farmers to sell privately at market prices, generating considerable economic activity and growth, especially in the rural areas.
1984	PRC opens 14 additional coastal cities to foreign investment, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Dalian. First mention in the State Council of the term 'Township and Village Enterprises' (TVE), to indicate the locally run industrial enterprises that spring up out of the reforms beginning in 1978, providing large-scale employment and entrepreneurial possibilities for many otherwise poor rural residents.
1988	A Japanese firm won a public auction for land, marking the first time since the Communist Revolution that a foreign entity gained a private interest on China’s soil.
April 15,1989	Following the death of popular reformer Hu Yaobang, students from leading Beijing universities congregate in Tiananmen Square outside the seat of China’s political power to show their support for Hu’s legacy. As the significance of the demonstration extends to deeper areas of Chinese society, including rampant inflation, a lack of political and social freedoms, and government corruption, workers and other social groups join the activities, staging demonstrations and speeches. On April 26, the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s newspaper, publishes a harsh editorial criticizing the protestors as subversive and dangerous, further inflaming the hitherto peaceful and relatively organized protestors.
June 4, 1989	After nearly two months of demonstrations, including hunger strikes, intense foreign media coverage, and tense meetings between student leaders and some of the highest tiers of Party leadership, the army is called in to clear Tiananmen Square. Out of the fighting along the Avenue of Eternal Peace in Beijing, anywhere between 300-800 students, workers and other citizens are killed by soldiers. Many liberal reformers in the government are ousted politically or leave the country. China’s reforms are brought to a standstill.
1990	Stock markets open in Shanghai and Shenzhen, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange becoming the 5th largest in the world as of December 2010.
1992	After three years of economic backsliding following the protests in Tiananmen Square and the resulting government crackdown, Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of key southern locations, and his unequivocal approval of SEZ’s in places like Shenzhen, reinvigorates the economic reforms.
April 20, 1994	China achieves full-functional connection to the Internet.
February 19, 1997	China resumes sovereignty over Hong Kong in a solemn handover ceremony where the British flag was ceremoniously lowered and replaced by the national flag of China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) flag.
1997-1998	In a move characteristic of the second stage of China’s reform period (1993-Present), many state-owned enterprises, including many Township and Village Enterprises, are liquidated and their assets sold to private investors.
2001	China joins the World Trade Organization, after years of negotiations, further opening its economy to foreign business and investment.
December, 2011	The South-to-North Diversion Project, the largest proposed engineering project in human history, is initiated in order to migrate abundant water resources from the southern regions to the water deprived north. A controversial plan, the project is projected to be completed in three significant phases over 50 years resulting in the annual diversion of over 44 billion cubic meters of water.
2008	The Summer Olympics are held in Beijing. The highly publicized mass event is treated as a return to global prominence. Liu Xiaobo publishes his co-authored “Charter 08” calling for political reforms in the PRC government. The document is signed by over 300 prominent intellectuals. Liu Xiaobo is imprisoned for 11 years, charged with “inciting subversion to state power.” In 2010, he wins the Nobel Peace Prize but is prohibited from attending the ceremony.
2010	China’s economy surpasses Japan’s to become the second largest in the world after the United States.
2011	Responding to civil unrest in the Middle East, China’s government undertakes a nationwide sweep of activists, lawyers, and journalists. Internationally celebrated artist and activist, Ai Weiwei, is detained at Beijing airport.

Reform Era Essential Terms

• The Central Committee – This committee of the highest-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has approximately 300 members who are elected by the Party Congress. Members of the Central Committee in turn elect the Politburo, a 25-person body whose nine-member Standing Committee forms the absolute highest level of China’s government.
• National People's Congress – Held every year in the Great Hall of the People on the western side of Tiananmen Square, this legislative body has 2,987 members.
• Cultural Revolution – A political movement launched by Mao Zedong and his allies in 1966 intending to abolish the so-called “Four Olds” (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) and sideline so-called “capitalist roaders.” Marked by intense class struggle, the most radical phase ended around 1969 when many participating youths were “sent-down” to the countryside, although the campaign didn’t officially end until after Mao’s death in 1976.
• Household Responsibility System – Begun in secret in the late 70s, this was a system in which farmers produced enough food to meet state quotas and then sold the excess on private markets. This system was so successful at increasing agricultural production that it was given official recognition by Deng Xiaoping and became a national policy in the early 1980’s.
• Great Leap Forward – Social, economic, and political campaign from 1958-1961 that was designed to move the country from an agrarian based society to a communist society by means of rapid industrialization and collectivization. The results were disastrous with estimates of 15 million to upwards to over 40 million people dying of starvation because of this campaign.
• Special Economic Zones (SEZs) – Areas and cities granted special economic status starting in the late 1970s so as to encourage foreign investment and increase export trade.
• Tiananmen Square – the largest public city square in the world, the square gets its name from the Tiananmen Gate “Gate of Heavenly Peace” that lies just north of the square and is an entrance into the imperial complex of the “Forbidden City.” The square was significantly expanded in 1958 and 1959 to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the founding of the PRC and became an important symbol for a new socialist China. It has also been the site of important protest movements, including a protest in 1976 after the death of Zhou Enlai and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Democracy Protests.
• Hukou (household registration) – Official residency permit, issued in the form of a booklet to families that includes names, place of residence, and marriage status. Hukou residence can be broadly classified as ‘rural’ or ‘urban.’ While the system has been relaxed since the early 1980’s, officially changing one’s hukou from ‘rural’ to ‘urban’ remains a challenge, particularly for the so-called floating migrant labor population.
• Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) – Begun during the Great Leap Forward as a means to increase production of non-agricultural goods in rural collectives. At the beginning of the reform and opening period, TVEs initially became an important supplement to rural income in the area of light manufacturing; in the last decade many TVEs have been privatized or dismantled.

Please click here for a pdf of the essential terms

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