HUAS95008 - China after Mao

Course Description

On September 9th, 1976, the most powerful man in China, Mao Zedong, passed away in Beijing. The death of Mao turned a new page in Chinese history. Deng Xiaoping, who used to be Mao firm follower, now came in power. This course examines China’s political and economic reform in post-Mao era. We will first examine the end of Cultural Revolution and how Deng handled Mao’s revolutionary legacies. Particularly, we will focus on Deng’s Reform and Opening-up policy, understanding Deng’s pragmatism and the inherent conflicts of his reform. The reform in the late 1970s and 1980s led to political and social crisis in 1989. From April to June, tens of thousands of Chinese students occupied the Tian’anmen Square, urging the government to launch democratic reforms. We will examine the causes and consequences of the Tian’anmen Square Protest. In the 1990s, while China continued to advance economic reform, political reform halted. Unlike former Soviet Union nations, China’s economic growth did not cease. In 2001, China joined the WTO (World Trade Organization), a step that marked China’s further integration into the global economy. The 2008 Olympus Games in Beijing announced the prominence of China as a rising super power of the world. In 2011, China’s GDP overtook Japan and ranked the second in the world. While the high-speed economic development greatly “modernized” China, it also created many social problems. The last part of the course will examine these conflicts and problems masked by China’s economic prosperity.

HUAS95008 China Studies