Economic and Political Policies

Qing Dynasty: The economy during this period has been the same like centuries prior. Focusing mainly in agriculture, handicraft , local trade and internacional trade. But the rulers of this dinasty have followed the tradition of protectionist economic policies putting many obsticules to foreign trade because they value way more chinese products than foreign products  (mainly those from western powers) and because they fear open internacional trade would disturb the country. And they were right about those fears because after the forced signature of the "unequal treaties" western merchants would trade as they wish without any real repercussion thus harming chinese merchants.

Five-Year Plan: After the communist party takes power in China their first goal is to estabilize the economy. Once this is done their first economic policy is a five-year long, soviet-style, reorganization of the economy. The goal is  industrial growth within a very hevay centralized goverment and the collectivization of the agriculture. The main focus is heavy industry (steal, coal, electricity production), they end up being state-owned meanwhile a lo of investment is put into them. Regarding the agriculture every farm in China is organize in large collectives, where thousands of farms produce yields that the State collects and redistribute within the country.

Great Leap Forward: During this time the goverment encourage all citiziens to give their best at working so the economy could grow even further. The colectives are integrated in even bigger blocks (people´s comunes) ,that in theory they should be more effective. Factory workers suffered even longer shifts  so more output can be produced. In the end there is a huge inbalance between industrial and agricultural output because the people´s comunes are not near as efficient as they should have been causing starvation arround the country where millions died. To fix it a program of decentralization starts in the farms by reducing the "basic unit" of agricultural output to a few families instead of entire towns. A lot of the industrial investment is shifted to the agriculture as well as several tax cuts.

Major Economic Reforms: As China is falling behind other economic powers in Europe and Asia they decide to work towards a free market economy while keeping some centralist ideas. Now  individual farmers could keep their yields for profit as long as some amount is given to the government at a fixed price. This encourage farmers to produce more and better output. The direction of the fabrics is given back to private investors and taxation on output produced is implemented instead of giving all the benefits to the central goverment. Opening economic policies are made so foregein investment is permited as well as more internacional trade is created in the so called Special Economic Zones, such as Shanghai. All this policies combine make the overall economic growth increase to levels never seen before in China, thus incrising the quality of life of Chinese citizies. This policies are still used and new ones are created in today´s China.