China, which is nowadays considered a superpower, has experienced two totally different roles when it comes to international relations. On the one hand, while Mao Zedong was in power, China was closed to the exterior. With Deng Xiaoping, China opened its doors to the rest of the world, becoming what it is today: a huge power in terms of GDP, imports and exports among others.
The main objective of this paper is to answer the question: to what extend has the leadership of Den Xiaoping changed the role of China in contemporary international relations? In order to do so, I will first introduce Mao Zedong and his way of ruling the country and after Deng Xiaoping so that we can see the differences. With Deng Xiaoping, we will focus on its open-
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It was a plan to change China from an agrarian society to a modern industrial society that lasted just two year due to its failure. Millions of citizens where moved to the countryside to work in fields or in manufacturing. He wanted to free China form the import steel and machinery and in order to achieve that he encouraged people to turn scrap metal into usable steel. This is why during these years it was common to see citizens burning their pots, pans and farming elements. However, the leap forward was a disaster. People were not used to work with steel, resulting in the burning of forests. Land was destroyed and as people where send to steel production there were not enough people to harvest the crops. Things did not go as planned and after a year, a famine set in and entire village died of starvation. Therefore, even tough this plan was supposed to last five years, it was ended after three years, which are called the “three bitter Years” in China. It is estimated that around 40 million people died of hunger between this years. This is why we could argue that he killed more people than Stalin and Hitler. However, the rest of the world and country didn’t know of its existence. This failure ended