ABSTRACT
This chapter covers economic reforms enacted under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death and their impact through the mid-1990s. It begins with agricultural reforms and decollectivization of agriculture that began in the late 1970s, and the stunning success of that policy, before turning to reforms in industry and the creation of the first special economic zones. The chapter then turns to the start of the pro-democracy movement in the mid-1980s, which reached its dramatic peak in the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. The chapter concludes with the brutal repression that ended that demonstration and its continuation, albeit in less violent and more routinized form, into the mid-1990s.
