Q&A ALL ABOUT COMMUNIST CHINA
What is the situation in China when Mao dies?
Mao died in 1976 at the end of ten years of what is generally referred to as the Cultural Revolution. This was a period of endless witch-hunts, purges and campaigns in which people proved their loyalty to Mao by denouncing friends, neighbours and even relatives. Economically, under Mao the country was a command economy, like all socialist countries at the time, but it was also an extraordinarily isolated economy. Throughout the Cultural Revolution the Chairman promoted the notion of self-reliance, leaving China cut off from the rest of the world, including from what was known, at the time,than what they had been in 1949. So by 1976 the country was confronted by two major issues. One was political, as thousands of highly placed party members were still imprisoned, under house arrest or banned from office as a result of the Cultural Revolution, including of course Deng Xiaoping. The other was economic, with a system incapable of addressing even the basic needs of the population.
