I have recently come across several relatively new journals and articles that depict China’s modernisation as a feat largely attributed to Deng Xiaoping. (Cynically) Disregarding Mao’s economic policies’ huge cost of life, how much did he actually help to modernise and industrialise China?
Introduction and Overview
The idea that China's development only took off under Deng Xiaoping is a myth, albeit a very popular one. The Maoist period saw enormous human and economic development in China. Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen wrote a detailed piece on Maoist China, where he says:
Because of its radical commitment to the elimination of poverty and to improving living conditions - a commitment in which Maoist as well as Marxist ideas and ideals played an important part - China did achieve many things… [including] The elimination of widespread hunger, illiteracy, and ill health… [a] remarkable reduction in chronic undernourishment… a dramatic reduction of infant and child mortality and a remarkable expansion of longevity.
These factors greatly influenced later economic growth; as Sen puts it:
The accomplishments relating to education, health care, land reforms, and social change in the pre-reform [i.e. Maoist] period made significantly positive contributions to the achievements of the post-reform period. This is so in terms of their role not only in sustained high life expectancy and related achievements, but also in providing firm support for economic expansion based on market reforms.
In other words, the reforms of Deng Xiaoping were only successful due to the prior achievements of the Maoist period. Let's now look at some of those developments, looking at both human and economic development.
Human Development
Maoist China saw large improvements in healthcare, education, and nutrition. Pre-revolutionary China was among the poorest, sickest societies on Earth; life expectancy was around 35 years, communicable diseases were rampant, and infant mortality rates were horrifyingly high. After the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, things began to improve rapidly. According to a study in the Journal of Global Health:
Life expectancy soared by around 30 years, infant mortality plummeted and smallpox, sexually transmitted diseases and many other infections were either eliminated or decreased massively in incidence... By the mid-1970s, China was already undergoing the epidemiologic transition, years ahead of other nations of similar economic status.
These improvements are attributed to "population mobilization, mass campaigns and a focus on sanitation, hygiene, clean water and clean delivery," as well as "clinical care and continuing public health programs to the masses through community-funded medical schemes and the establishment of community-based health workers." According to a study in the journal Population Studies:
China's growth in life expectancy at birth from 35–40 years in 1949 to 65.5 years in 1980 is among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history... Physician and hospital supply grew dramatically under Mao due to a variety of factors (including increases in government financing, the introduction of social insurance for urban public employees, and the launch of China's Rural Cooperative Medical System in the mid-1950's). Rural Cooperative Medical Schemes (CMS) were vigorously promoted and became widespread in the late 1960's as part of the Cultural Revolution.
On the issue of education, Sen notes that the huge improvements made by the People's Republic (including dramatic increases in literacy) can be attributed primary to the pre-reform Maoist period:
China's breakthrough in the field of elementary education had already taken place before the process of economic reform was initiated at the end of the seventies. Census data indicate, for instance, that literacy rates in 1982 for the 15-19 age group were already as high as 96 percent for males and 85 percent for females.
The paper in Population Studies confirms Sen's statement:
China made large strides in primary and secondary education under Mao.
All-in-all, it can be said that Mao left China significantly healthier, better-educated, and better-fed than it had been before the revolution. Now let's look at the direct economic contributions that he made.
Economic Development
In his book Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic (one of the standard works on the topic), historian Maurice Meisner states:
Yes despite all the failings and setbacks, it is an inescapable historical conclusion that the Maoist era was the time of China's modern industrial revolution. Starting with an industrial base smaller than that of Belgium's in the early 1950's... [China] emerged at the end of the Mao period as one of the six largest industrial producers in the world.
He goes on to compare the Maoist record to other developed nations:
The Maoist economic record... compares favorably with comparable stages in the industrialization of Germany, Japan, and Russia - hitherto the most economically successful cases (among major countries) of late industrialization. In Germany the rate of economic growth for the period 1880-1914 was 33 percent per decade. In Japan from 1874-1929 the rate of increase per decade was 43 percent. The Soviet Union over the period 1928-1958 achieved a decadal increase of 54 percent. In China over the years 1952-1972 the decadal rate was 64 percent. This was hardly economic development at "a snail's pace," as foreign journalists persist in misinforming their readers.
In other words, Maoist China achieved a rate of growth that surpassed that of virtually all other industrialized nations during their period of development. In addition, Meisner notes that this "was all the more remarkable in that it was accomplished by the Chinese people themselves on the basis of their own meager material resources, with little outside assistance or support. Save for limited Soviet aid in the 1950s, which was repaid in full (and with interest) by the mid-1960s, Maoist industrialization proceeded without benefit of foreign loans or investments."
Conclusion
For all of its faults (and serious faults they were), the Maoist period saw enormous human and economic development in China. If I may quote once more from Meisner, "future historians, without ignoring the failures and the crimes, will surely record the Maoist era in the history of the People's Republic (however else they may judge it) as one of the great modernizing epochs in world history, and one that brought great social and human benefits to the Chinese people."
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