TNAG-1343-FCO40-1773-Visit-by-Margaret-Thatcher--UK-Prime-Minister--to-Beijing-fo-1984 — Page 133

defeat resulting in the Communist victory in 1949.

7.

The People's Republic of China was established on 1 October 1949. The new Government faced the enormous problems of establishing administrative control and restoring an economy ravaged by warfare. Considerable achievements were made in reviving and developing the economy primarily through the collectivisation of agriculture, the nationalisation of private industries and the institution of the First Five Year Plan (1953-1958). success did not satisfy Mao Zedong and he launched an ambitious

This however economic programme known as the 'Great Leap Forward'. together with poor harvests and the withdrawal of Soviet aid and technicians in 1960 proved disasterous and resulted in the temporary eclipse of Mao himself and the reversal of his policies.

This level of

8. In 1966 Mao made a comeback in the form of the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' during which many of those officials who Mao considered to have been directing China in a revisionist course including Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were disgraced and the Party machine all but destroyed.

Despite his great personal authority Mao was unable to control many of the forces which he had unleashed and a semblance of order was only achieved with the intervention of the Army. life were marked by an increasingly intense between those leaders who had come to power during the Cultural Revolution (such as his wife Jiang Qing), and the old guard of the Party (personified by Zhou Enlai) many of whom had been

The last years of Mao's struggle for succession

rehabilitated after being disgraced in the Cultural Revolution. Amongst these was Deng Xiaoping.

A month after Mao's death in 1976 Jiang Qing and her associates (the 'Gang of Four') were arrested and the succession fell to the little known figure of Hua Guofeng.

Deng Xiaoping, who had been 9. Hua's succession was short-lived. again disgraced in 1975 was rehabilitated and restored to his former positions in 1977 and from then on increased his power at the expense of Hua. Deng has consolidated his position and that of his supporters and has used his power to reverse many of Mao's policies and to institute a thoroughgoing programme of economic and social reform aimed at modernising the economy, developing closer relations