Chinese Communism in the Era of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) astonished the world with its capacity for effective governance. Having won the Civil War, the party leaders moved swiftly to restore order, instituted centralized control over China for the first time in nearly a century, and established China as a credible great power in East Asia by fighting the United States to a standstill in Korea. They succeeded in rapidly rehabilitating the war-torn economy, and in embarking on ambitious programs of industrialization and socialist transformation.