ABSTRACT
When the communists proclaimed the founding of a “new China” on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong and his fledgling government set in motion the creation of a new society. The emergence of communism under Mao fundamentally altered the social, political, and economic structure of Chinese life. While the chapters that follow are primarily about the ways in which Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms transformed life in communist China, it is useful to contrast those changes against a backdrop of the social, political, and economic order that preceded them. In this chapter, I will give a brief outline of the structure of society under Mao and then an outline of the changes that were set in motion by Deng. While the short descriptions here will not do these topics justice, it is important to give a basic outline of this background.1 The basic theoretical points that guide the discussion of this chapter can be stated simply: (1) under Mao, the communists set in place a system that intimately wove together political ideology, economic production, and social control; (2) the task for Deng was to unravel this interdependent system; and (3) Deng’s government undertook this task in a gradual fashion, experimenting widely with many policies that would gradually rationalize and cede governmental control over the economy and society.
