Full coverage: 95 years of glory

After the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, China faced the major problem of industrial and social development. Before the founding of the new China, there was very little industry because of decades of war.

Western powers also blocked its access to markets and advanced technology. Despite the challenges, the CPC attached great importance to industrialization in its development agenda, which would transfer the country's economy and people's livelihood.

The party was trying to build up a new system in the country in a more comprehensive way. In the third report of our series , 95th Anniversary of the CPC: Serving the People, we find out how a New China was rebuilt and reinvented under the leadership of the CPC. 

"The industrial foundation that was laid by Mao during his thirty years in power that was later proved to be quite important for China to reform. So this was several aspects that we think to be the continuity of the Chinese communist party’s rule of China," said NGEOW Chow Bing, Deputy Director, Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia.

"But I noticed a very interesting thing, people of Chinese specialist in the west draw attention to the fact that there been significant increase in life expectancy in China during this period (1949-1978)," said John Ross, Well-known columnist in UK, Former Deputy Mayor of London.

During the 27 years in which Mao Zedong was alive, the chronological life expectancy increased by more than one year, for each year there is a power, that has never been anything like that in human history. This was astonishing. So in this period, not merely were old problems of China’s national self-determination solved but the social living conditions of people developed immeasurably. 

"For a long time, it looked as if countries like China just could not industrialize and could not compete with the western countries and so on. But we’ve seen, since the middle of the twentieth century, you know, with the time of 1949 revolution, but also the end of colonialism in many parts in Asia and so on, we saw the world change to create a new sort of possibility that the world did not have to be dominated by the west, which was a small fraction of humanity. Looking back now, we can see that possibility, opening up from crucial period at the end of the second world war. And now with China’s success with the reform period and so on, what that means is that a huge country like China can go from great backwardness to economic modernization and vitality and dynamism," said Martin Jacques, Senior Fellow, Department of Politics and International Studies; Well-known Author, Cambridge University.

"More emphasis on the rights of woman, the female rights, more emphasis on the new system, more help with the spared industrial capacity, even like the “Sanxian”, the third front project. All those source seems very helpful for the development of the market economy in the Deng Xiaoping era. So I would say as a scholar, we really cannot be, our view cannot be, you know, affected by ideologies. We have to look into facts, how those two eras, two historical stages are connected, you know, to get what we choose from it. Not just simply criticize it when following another. That’s because history is history, we have to look at history in a more objective way," said Zheng Yongnian, Director, East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore.