What Factors Made Deng Economic Policies More Successful Than Mao's

What were factors that made Deng’s economic policies more successful than Mao’s? “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mice.” This was Deng’s pragmatic take on the economy as opposed to Mao. Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping were both leaders of the CCP. Mao Zedong (1893-1976) was the chairman of the People’s Republic of China that led the Chinese Communist Party until his death (“Mao Tse-tung Biography”). Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) was the leader of the CCP from 1978 onwards, after the death of Mao (“Deng Xiaoping Biography”). Both of the leaders had very different approaches to improving the Chinese economy. Deng’s economic policies were more successful than Mao’s due to several factors namely: Mao’s flaws in

Having only made minor improvements to agriculture with his first 5-year plan, statistics of Mao’s performance showed that there was “only 1 percent increase in grain production” and “only 3.8 percent increase in agricultural production” (Luh 30). Mao’s industrial statistics were better with state-owned and private sectors respectively producing 67.3 percent and 32.7 percent of total industrial output (Li 115). Nevertheless, overall stats show 5% annual drop in economic growth (Luh, 30). Mao might have considered both of these aspects for the economy, but the imbalance of his emphasis to the aspects shows his ineptness in economics. On the contrary, Deng Xiaoping focused on the four modernizations consisting of industry and agriculture, as well as science and technology, which were fully approved by the CCP in the 3rd Plenum, as the basis to improve economy (Lynch 156). For agriculture, he inaugurated the Responsibility System, where families deliver specified amount of crops for “production teams” and “collective projects,” increasing rural production. This resulted in grain production increase by 34% from 1978 to 1989 (Lynch 160). Deng has made significant industrial progress as well, making connections with multinational industries from high-end and low-end segments, such as Panasonic Corporation and Coca-Cola in 1978 (Jin 7). Additionally, average economic growth was more than 9 percent per year (Hu and Moshin 1). These facts prove that Deng’s economic plans led to tremendous economic growth and was more adept in this field, compared to what Mao had done as Deng’s predecessor with his inept