Daily Times

On 71th anniversary-a journey from Mao to Xi–, China is changed dramatically. Today it is different from one that existed in 1949. Many years back, it was poor and down. Average life expectancy was just 35 years to 36 years and the average per-capita income for its half billion people was equal to $ 55. GDP was around $ 44.4 billion.

At the end of the civil war when Communist forces under Mao Zedong defeated the nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek, who retreated to Taiwan in 1949, phenomenal change kicked off.

1 October, 1949, after 20 years of civil war, Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the new People’s Republic of China, declaring: “The Chinese people have stood up.” Now, under the leadership of President Xi Jingping, China is world’s second-largest economy and average per-capita income is around $10,000. Life expectancy has more than doubled to 77 years.

From its founding in 1949 to late 1978, China followed the socialist planned economy. In the 30 years, China moved from an agricultural country to an initially industrialized country. During the period, the Chinese leaders unswervingly followed the strategy featuring high-speed development. Without borrowing any foreign loans, China successfully undertook 156 large industrial projects, and succeeded in producing atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb and artificial satellite, as per Chinese embassy. All of these had provided a foundation for sustainable development of the Chinese economy. In 1972, US President Richard Nixon visited China, and this shows China’s “opening up” politically, a move that laid a good foundation for the reform and opening up program China introduced in late 1978.

Between 2013 and 2018, the country’s investments in renewables grew from $53.3 billion to an impressive peak of $125 billion

Thanks to the implementation of the reform and opening up policy, China’s economic and social development has ranked among the highest in the world.

Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s agricultural economic system featured private feudal land ownership. Landlords and rich peasants, who accounted for less than 10 percent of the agricultural population, owned more than 70 percent of the arable land, while the poor and lower and middle peasants, who accounted for 90 percent of the agricultural population, possessed less than 30 percent of the cultivated land.

Under the system, the agricultural production was at a very low level, resulting in an acute shortage of the main farm produce. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the agrarian reform was undertaken throughout the country from 1950 to 1952 and the feudal land ownership was abolished.

With many agri technological development till date So far, the sci-tech experts have helped set up 11,500 enterprises in rural areas, transforming an average of 26,000 advanced technologies annually and benefiting over 65 million farmers. The market value of smart agriculture in China is predicted to reach 200 billion yuan in 2020, according to a report on the development of digital technologies in the country’s rural areas.

In the early days of industrialization in the People’s Republic of China, the output of steel, crude oil and electric power generation ranked only 26th, 27th and 25th respectively in the world.

Now according to data published by the United Nations Statistics Division, China accounted for 28 percent of global manufacturing output in 2018. That puts the country more than 10 percentage points ahead of the United States, which used to have the world’s largest manufacturing sector until China overtook it in 2010. With total value added by the Chinese manufacturing sector amounting to almost $4 trillion in 2018, manufacturing accounted for nearly 30 percent of the country’s total economic output.

From 1949 to 1978, China pulled itself together and achieved consolidation for all-round future development trajectory. After it launched opening up reforms, magical results enthralled the world.

Now China remains one of the three top investment destinations for 63 percent of respondents in the European Business in China Business Confidence Survey 2020, which was released by the European Union (EU) Chamber of Commerce in China and global consultancy firm Roland Berger. “The Chinese market remains attractive to a majority of European companies, which remain firmly committed to China’s development,” said JoergWuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.

The Chinese Government has long attached high importance to increasing energy supply. In 1994, the year the PRC was founded, the national primary energy output was merely 23 million tons of standard coal and the total output of electricity generated was only 4.3 billion kWh. In 2008, these figures increased to 2.6 billion tons of standard coal and 3466.9 billion kWh respectively. As a result of the increased investment, energy production capacity in China has been greatly enhanced. Nowadays,

China increasingly looked toward securing its future energy needs with sustainable alternatives. A 2012 white paper on China’s energy policy emphasized the need to “vigorously develop new and renewable energy.” In accordance with the 2016 Paris Agreement, China has committed to make non-fossil fuel energy 20 percent of its energy supply by 2030. China is the world’s largest investor in clean energy. Between 2013 and 2018, the country’s investments in renewables grew from $53.3 billion to an impressive peak of $125 billion. This figure has fallen in recent years, but in 2019 China’s investments still stood at $83.4 billion – roughly 23 percent of global renewable energy investment. China is also becoming the largest market in the world for renewable energy. It is estimated that 1 in every 4 gigawatts of global renewable energy will be generated by China through 2040.

There are no more than 50,000 scientific and technical workers across the nation when New China was founded in 1949. Of these, people who were engaged in scientific and technological research accounted for a mere 500. And only some 30 research institutions existed then. In November 1949, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in Beijing and this was followed by establishment of a batch of research institutions in various departments and regions. Over the past 71 years, a series of breakthroughs have been made in such fields as space technology, nuclear generation technology, high performance computing technology, and manufacture technology of complete set of equipment in heavy machinery, numerical control machine tool and third generation mobile communications technology as well.

Modern science and technology were almost nonexistent when China started its first Five-Year Plan in 1953, whereas on May 5, 2020, the final year of the country’s 13th Five-Year Plan, China launched the Long March-5B carrier rocket, which marked another step forward in its manned space program.

MIC 2025 is an initiative which strives to secure China’s position a global powerhouse in high-tech industries. The aim is to reduce China’s reliance on foreign technology imports and invest heavily in its own innovations in order to create Chinese companies that can compete both domestically and globally. The goal of raising domestic content of core components and materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025 will contribute to self-sufficiency.

The writer is freelance journalist