Elizabeth Economy Chapter 2 Summary

In Elizabeth Economy’s monograph, the Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese state, the topic of a new modern china is discussed and breaks down how President Xi Jinping wishes to steer the country into the future. Elizabeth Economy explains President Xi Jinping’s desire to constitute a Third Revolution and how there will be a “New Chinese State.” To start, one must first understand China’s past to learn what a “New Chinese” State would look like. During the time of Mao Zedong, China attempted to become a player on the World scale. (Mao winning civil war? Command economy, totalitarian society, and Mao cult, How Maoist China actually closed itself off from the world)

Economically Mao instituted a program named The Great Leap forward

Any outspoken person of Mao was attacked. The Cultural revolution worked. After Mao Zedong’s death and Hua Guofeng, essentially a Mao fanboy, failed as his successor, Deng Xiaoping took over control of China and basically saved the country. Deng Xiaoping started to undo some of Mao’s policies and began to open up the country. Xiaoping wanted to shift away from Maoism and began to institute 4 modernization to help China grow. The 4 Modernizations were to modernize agriculture, industry, national defense, science, and technology. These modernizing reforms helped move China from a command economy to an economy that was closer to a market driven one. Zones for foreign investment opened up and the state decentralized with a collective leadership. Deng Xiaoping and his handpicked successors helped China become a budding economic super power while at the same time keeping a pretty low profile global

Despite the good that Xiaoping did for China economically, he was far from being a perfect leader. The handling of 1989 Tiananmen Square Protest and Massacre still showed the terrible side of the Chinese Communist Party. Following Xiaoping there was a time where it seemed as if China was starting to open up more. This would change under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping took over with a vision of a new Chinese state. President Xi started with centralizing authority under personal leadership. President Xi began to centralize institutional power by obtaining institutional power over committees and commissions. In this phase, Xi ended term limits so life terms were now possible for leadership in the Chinese Communist Party. In addition, President Xi also undertook massive anti-corruption campaigns to rid the party of potential threats. Cleaning up the party helps Xi gain popularity in China. President Xi wrote his thought into the Chinese Constitution in 2017. Xi thought says that global triumph of socialism over capitalism is