From Mao to Deng

In 1949 Mao Zedong's Communists won China's civil war. They brought land reform and order, but Mao's Great Leap Forward caused the deadliest famine in history, and his Cultural Revolution turned the country upside down.

After Mao died in 1976, Deng Xiaoping let farmers sell their crops and opened China to foreign factories. Growth of about ten per cent a year lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Economic freedom did not bring political freedom: in 1989 the army crushed protesters in Tiananmen Square. By 2000 China was becoming the world's workshop.