This is Part 1 of a 2-part series. In this part, we cover the events that led to unrest among people.
Mao Zedong, known for his radical vision, launched People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, making China a single-party state i.e. only one-party could form the government.
In 1958, he launched a 5-year plan, The Great Leap Forward, with high focus on industrial production.
With the aim of surpassing US & UK in steel production, many farmers were pushed into it; agriculture suffered & this, along with other factors, led to Great Chinese Famine, which killed over 30 million people.
So, Mao resigned as President of China and power shifted to moderates in the party, but Mao was still Party Chairman and wanted power back.
Then in 1966, Mao launched Cultural Revolution against party leaders, who he believed were taking the country in the wrong anti-communist direction.
Student-led cultural revolution, which lasted till Mao’s death by heart attack in 1976, led to killing of millions and damaged Chinese economy.
In 1977, Deng Xiaoping became the leader and took initiatives to undo past & improve economy; the reforms were successful and reduced poverty.
Some sectors were privatised & government considered that prices, which it was setting so far, should be decided by open-market factors (demand & supply).
But a sudden shift to new pricing system was risky, so a gradual roll-out was decided where companies that met government’s production quotas, were allowed to sell their surpluses at market-prices.
In a country with chronic shortages, this allowed powerful people to buy cheap and sell expensive; e.g. a powerful person bought bread for 10c (low price), sold back to company at 15c (high price) & company could sell it as surplus at 20c.
‘Connections’ & ‘Power’ became important, leading to corruption & nepotism.
Then in 1978, with the news that government is opening the market completely, people began hoarding stuff because they feared things will become expensive.
Government panicked and cancelled the decision, but large hoarding that had happened led to shortages, which triggered high inflation & made the gap between rich & poor too explicit.
This was a blow to the socialist ideology of the country, where people were supposed to be equal; unfair wealth distribution was associated with capitalism.
People, who had seen the worst of communism (Cultural Revolution), were frustrated with the current impure socialism and demand for democracy gained momentum.
In Part 2, we cover how the pro-democracy protests unfolded and events that led to the infamous massacre.
