China's Capitalist Revolution Part 1/9

When Chairman Mao died in 1976, he left China in chaos and poverty. He was succeeded by Deng Xiaoping, who overturned Maoism and taught the Chinese to love capitalism, creating special investment zones for the West. But Deng's crash course in capitalism went wrong when inflation grew and workers lost jobs.

By 1989, China faced disaster. Now, 20 years after the tragic events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, this programme reveals an interpretation of the motives of the demonstrators that may well overturn the conventional view in the West.

The demonstrators did not begin by demanding democracy. Corruption, inflation and the hardship caused by economic reforms drove students and workers to confront the government and the army. Students went on hunger strike, and troops killed more than 2,000.

Deng Xiaoping gave the order to fire, but his ideas prevailed. This film argues that Deng's capitalist revolution created today's China.

download full video here [about 800MB better quality]: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NUHI83Y5

Category:

Education

Tags:

• china
• capitalist
• revolution
• part
• bbc
• documentary
• politics

[trupoed11]

@chengduFTW of couse it is, american capies made it

[chengduFTW]

I call bias

[dojokonojo]

One wonders, if Deng were alive today, would the antagonism between the USA and China exist :\

[helisplat]

Deng XiaoPing learnt from Singapore.

[TheKalihiMan]

Deng Xiaoping is arguably one of the smartest men in history. He found a way for rigid government control and a market economy to coexist.

[TKKTism]

All China needed was sufficiently logical individual, one who was in power of the CCP and can realise KMT's development plans for China was much more practical and efficient than State Communism economy, to put China on path it is on today. If you want to thank China efficient modernisation plans then you should thank the KMT officials who initially crafted these ideas.

[TKKTism]

@jia2001, what Deng did was not novel. Most of his plans of modernise China, i.e. developing special economic zones to capture geographic and other economic advantages, can largely been found in past KMT officials (especially Sun Yat Sen, just read his "the international development of china" book). It just that Maoists and their angry peasant class lacked the aptitude to distinguish and incentive to understand good economic policies from bad ones.

[jia2001]

Deng Xiao Ping the best thing that ever happen to China!

[Fenristheman]

Deng is arguable one of the greatest leaders in 5000 years Chinese history

[MingDynasty700]

The last time China tried out democracy was in 1912, in that year alone the elections were free and fair. But this ended on March 1913, when Song Jiaoren was assassinated. Since then, China experienced 15 years of warlords' dictatorship&anarchy, 27 years of KMT　dictatorship　and 60+ years of CCP dictatorship, accompanied by much bloodshed.

If S.Korea, Taiwan and even Japan only succeed in democratization after getting rich, how can China feel confident about democratization now?