Under Mao Rule: One Nation, Two Worlds

Abstract

The events detailed in this thesis modify the way previous research has studied the regional economic disparity phenomenon in China. Today, China enjoys an average economic growth rate of 9.5%, yet, the eastern “money-making” coast of China harbors a vast underdeveloped interior. The policies that Mao Tse-tung implemented as former leader of the People’s Republic of China (1949-1976), to curb economic inequality only deepened the divide between rural and urban life. His policies are used as theoretical framework in the context of globalization and social outcomes, as a lens to view the deepened socio-economic gap between the vast underdeveloped rural regions and the dense, but highly developed, urban regions. Topics such as the Great Leap Forward, a promise of a land of riches, and movements such as the Four Cleanups and the Cultural Revolution created bitter tension between the two sides on a micro-level. Finally, as China began to enter the modern world competing on a global scale, something, upon entrance to globalization, was left behind; the entirety of the western part of China.J Brown 2012. City Versus Countryside in Mao’s China. New York. Cambridge University Press.