China: Facts, Analysis, and Strategy

By Dr. Wenyi Yu

China’s development momentum will last for 200 more years. This book focused on China’s Economic System Reform and Opening-up to the Outside World, and answered the why, when, who, where, and how? The author used his observation and analysis to break down the Reform step by step. The story started from China’s national situation, followed by the kick-off, the operation, the policy, the little-known side of the senior decision-making process, and the organizational behaviors of the Communist Party of China. The Destiny of Chinese Nation and the development strategy are the unique achievements in China Studies.
In 2009, the author presided over the program “The Planning of Economic and Cultural Industries Development of Xuanwu District, Beijing, 2009–2015.” He anticipated that the population of the Beijing metropolitan area shall be 70–100 million, and pointed out the necessity to build one more international airport in South Beijing. He also concluded the program “World Metropolis, Humanistic Beijing, and the Planning of the Cultural Finance during 2010–2015” by the same inferences. In 2014, the construction of Xiong An New District began. The Beijing Economic Circle has brought the prediction of 100-million population close to reality. On September 25, 2019, Beijing Da Xing International Airport was officially opened to traffic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665529501

Dr. Wenyi Yu

In April and May 2021, Dr. Yu’s monograph “The United States of America: Facts, Analysis, and Strategy” (AuthorHouse, IN, April 11, 2021) was ranked by Amazon.com as follows: (1) New releases of Politics Literacy Criticism: #1; (2) Best Sellers of Politics Literacy Criticism #3; (3) New releases of Economic Policy & Development #19; (4) New Releases of Development & Growth Economics #13; (5) New releases of Literacy Subjects & Themes #41; (6) New releases of Business Biographies & History #52; and Japan’s Rakuten.com Foreign books Attention ranking: #1. The paper book and the e-book have been distributed in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Brazil, India, etc.

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© 2021 Dr. Wenyi Yu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  06/30/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2951-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2950-1 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

About the Term China

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Part One Before August 4, 1977

Chapter IChina’s Geography and Civilization

Chapter IITrue history (1839–1949)

Chapter III156 large projects

Chapter IVThe Proletarian Cultural Revolution

Chapter V136 talks

Part Two Since August 4, 1977

Chapter VIFu River

Chapter VIIA Family

Chapter VIIIThirty-three Scholars

Chapter IXDeng Xiao Ping

Chapter XWan Li

Chapter XIReformers in Guang Dong

Chapter XIIRising period

Chapter XIIIHow to succeed?

Chapter XIVUnique Approach

Part Three National Destiny & Strategy

Chapter XVResources

Chapter XVIExperience

Chapter XVIIDestiny of Chinese Nation

Chapter XVIIIFuture strategic vision

Vocabulary A-Z

Afterword

About the Author

List of Diagrams and Tables

List of Diagrams

Diagram 1 The plateaus, plain, and the sea of Zhong Guo — a sofa‐shaped terrain

Diagram 2 The geographic similarity between mainland China (mainland Zhong Guo) and the contiguous USA

Diagram 3 The Provinces and Cities along with Zhong Guo’s eastern coastal region

Diagram 4 Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) and the Provinces

Diagram 5 Yellow River and the Provinces

Diagram 6 The waterway from Zhu Xi Yu Jia Village to the East Zhong Guo Sea through Po Yang Lake and Yangtze River

Diagram 7 Destiny of Chinese Nation and Wars and Events (1839–2019, 180 years)

List of Tables

Table 1. USSR-assisted Projects (Twenty-five Coal projects)

Table 2. USSR-assisted Projects (two Petroleum projects)

Table 3. USSR-assisted Projects (twenty-five Electricity projects)

Table 4. USSR-assisted Projects (seven Iron and steel projects)

Table 5. USSR-assisted Projects (thirteen Non-ferrous metal mining and processing projects)

Table 6. USSR-assisted Projects (seven Chemical projects)

Table 7. USSR-assisted Projects (twenty-four Mechanic projects)

Table 8. USSR-assisted Projects (one light industry project)

Table 9. USSR-assisted Projects (two medicine projects)

Table 10. The Life Expectancy of the Dynasty in China (Zhong Guo)’s History

Table 11. The anticipation of Life Expectancy of China’s Regime

Table 12. The Period of Prosperity of China (Zhong Guo)

Table 13. The Prosperous time and the Life of the Dynasty in China (Zhong Guo) History

ABOUT THE TERM CHINA

China is the theme of the book.

What is China?

What is the definition of China?

The Mandarin pronunciation of China is Zhong Guo. What does it mean in Chinese? In fact, there is no precise definition. Literally speaking, Zhong is the center point of a circle; Guo is a nation with a powerful government. The Chinese meaning of Zhong Guo means a country located in the center. Which center? The universe? Between the sky and the earth? The earth? The middle of the Yellow River Basin? The most treasurable part in your mind or of your soul? Regarding this definition, 1.4 billion Chinese people may have one billion explanations.

We know that Zhong Guo is made up of many villages and cities.

My hometown is Linchuan (Lin Chuan) County, Jiangxi (Jiang Xi) Province, southeast China. It is also the hometown of many Chinese historical figures, such as Wang An Shi, Tang Xian Zu, Yan Shu, and Yan Ji Dao. It is a place that produced outstanding prime minister, political reformers, generals, top Chinese poets, great writers, scholars, outstanding artists, and eminent engineers. For example, Tang Xian Zu (1550–1616 AD) was called China’s William Shakespeare (1564–1616 AD) and be memorized. His drama Mu Dan Ting has been popular from its premiere 300 years ago until today, being a precious element of Chinese culture. Lin Chuan has had the prosperity of cultural fortunes for more than a thousand years. For people in this region, writing books, paintings, and calculations are not difficult. My grandmother did not attend school but had extremely fast and witty mental arithmetic and Marx-style dialectics in daily practices. There is no cultural barrier. We were proud of where we came from since we were in childhood, hence had a sense of superiority psychologically. The village where I was born is big. There were many adult men, and I had never felt insecure since I began to know the surrounding. In the Qing Dynasty, 300 years ago, Yu Jia Village became wealthy by the efforts of the whole village’s adults they invested in tin mines and its industrial chain in provinces hundreds of miles away. With giant accomplishments in the mining and processing of tin products, they had the funds to build their own houses into blocks of arts in the home village. The biggest house has ninety-nine rooms in which I lived for two years. It took more than ten years to complete the construction and decoration. The craftsmen used the money they earned from working here to build houses for themselves. These artistic houses have very exquisite brick carvings, stone carvings, and wood carvings, expressing Chinese philosophy, drama, and prayers, and can still live inside today. My own old house has an area of 3,000 SF, standing by a canal, in front of the village, facing a big river. The local people say that the location and the fortune of my house (Feng Shui) is superior. Fu River is very wide, and the current on the shore is swift. My grandmother’s only worry for me was that I would be drowned and she had no way to explain it to my father…. In this sense, Zhong Guo is a hometown concept.

My grandfather Yu Jing Xiang was an accountant of the government grain bureau of a county that had a big state-owned uranium mine connected by railway to the far end. He received a good private school education. His handwriting was very beautiful. I knew the folklife of the Qing Dynasty from him. People of his age used shareholding system in commercial practices in early 20th century — people of my age had not knowledge that this not only occurred before, but also was quite popular then. My grandfather did not retire until he was eighty-five years old. This is rare. He took his wages back every month to support me — his grandson; my father Yu Yuan Ben was a general medical practitioner and the dean of a hospital, so I had never been afraid of getting sick from childhood. Since I attended the school at seven years old, I was number one in the score and brought a lifetime honor to my grandmother Che Zhen Xiang. My father graduated from a local medical school, then worked in the town and the city, a few miles to our old house. He came back once a month, with big bundles of newspapers, periodicals, arts pictorials, and books as my readings — all stuffs with knowledge he could collected. My father never criticized nor said no to me. He was handsome and very popular. Everyone was proud of knowing him. The seniors in the village would like to share their stories with my father when I grew up and when I returned home from university to see my grandmother in the spring and summer holidays. I could see the radiances in their eyes when they touched the exciting memories. When China was generally short of food during the 1960s–1970s, our family had no worries about that. The neighbors in the village often came to us for help, they knocked on the door and asked for penicillin, Dextrose saline, alcohol, Purple Potion, tape, bandage, rice, money, or the appointment to see the well-known doctors in the city. Local health station for the peasants (also in the village) was short of penicillin — this was the situation across the countryside of the nation in the early 1970s. My grandma ordered me you take this for him, you take that for her, and I knew where they were. I did, and thanks followed, which cultivated a sense of my self-centeredness. But we were never narrow-minded due to self-confidence, my grandma and my father had a warm heart and hospitality by nature. Although my elementary school was in the village, less than five minutes’ walk to my house, I liked to detour to the riverbank with my classmates every day after school, with uninterrupted stories, jokes, and smiles all the way. It took at least thirty minutes to come back home, especially in summer and autumn. When my grandma asked me what are you doing, the answer was discussing learning then no problem. In this sense, Zhong Guo is a memory.

When I grew up and gradually met more people, I realized that everyone has reasons of his confidence. For example, a boy who had never played soccer could kick the ball a long distance when he came on the field the first time, his confidence was quickly established. Everyone is more or less self-centered. When I was teaching at Tsinghua University, a colleague brought up from Tsinghua campus told me that when she was a child, she thought the world was only the size of Tsinghua University; later, when she went to study outside the Tsinghua campus, she adjusted her vision to Hai Dian District and Beijing (Bei Jing), and gradually established the geographic concept of the City of Bei Jing. This phenomenon also appeared in a young girl who firmly believed that the area of Peking University was only twice the size of her primary school. When she entered the campus of Peking University, she realized that the university’s size is more than thirty times of her school. Based on these facts, I have the inference that humans who had lived in Zhong Guo for thousands of years must have had more or less the same ideas in their hearts as I had. They all thought that the world they were in was the center under the sky. The country where you live in is a centric country, — which is what we call the consensus today. Therefore, when someone called out China, everyone agreed with one heart. In fact, few people know where the borders of China are. In this sense, Zhong Guo is a centric concept.

I lived in Beijing (Bei Jing) for eighteen years. My family lived in Niu Jie community in Bei Jing for seven years, in which tens of thousands of Muslim families gathered, with their school, temples and restaurants. The so-called cultural conflicts or religious conflicts was not often, on the contrary, people lived harmoniously. The accidents as described by culture-conflict models in academic books, in this block, indeed, was not common in real life. It is said, Hui Min (Muslim) was the final fighter in the protection of the interior city of Bei Jing from foreign invasion a hundred years ago. On summer nights, we walked in the intoxicating evening breeze, and didn’t see significant differences among different ethnic groups. Foreigners may not know that ethnic minorities living on this land may love the city and the village as or even stronger than the Han nationality. Zhong Guo is the common homeland of fifty-six ethnic groups. Everyone can live on this land — An African young man married a Chinese wife and claims he is the descendant of Chinese ancestor Emperor Yan and Emperor Huang; after Brazilian soccer players became Chinese nationals, Zhong Guo has one more minority nation — this is what we call Zhong Guo. Few people know exactly what Zhong Guo is, how big the size is, what it means to the 1.4 billion people, how wide the sea is, and how high the mountains are. Zhong Guo just like a limitless container, which can hold everything, and we put all that we understand, we don’t understand, and we don’t want to understand into the category, all of them. In this way, the huge and obscure concept of Zhong Guo is so accepted. People considered that Zhong Guo is a cultural concept, not a definition by the border. Maybe. Because the area is too big and there are too many people. When we were kids, we did not develop accurate and precise behaviors and thinking habits. We often said probably. Only through gradual education could we implant strict thinking, the sense of accuracy, and the code of conduct, so that the adults can make the most complicated calculation and the most compact products today. Ancient Chinese knew that Zhong Guo was big, but no one has measured and recorded it until the Treaty of Nerchinsk between Qing Dynasty of China and Tsardom of Russia on September 7, 1689. Most are qualitative rather than quantitative descriptions. They considered that Zhong Guo was a place that people could live, eat, and keep warm, that is all. In this sense, Zhong Guo is not only a centric concept but also a macro concept.

Thousands of years have passed, when someone says that China is not the center, your first reaction is disapproval, and the second reaction is to stand up. While thinking about the place and environment in which we grew up, I think China Studies itself is very interesting. Extending this inference to Europe, it is not difficult to understand Europe’s history — where the controversy and struggle between geocentric and heliocentric theories occurred. Human beings living on the earth thought naturally that the earth was the center of the universe, and everything revolved around the earth, but the heliocentric theory is correct. Similarly, Zhong Guo has been constantly adjusting its positioning due to increasing conflicts with the powers abroad and the failures since 1839. This process of transformation and adaptation is quite painful and suffering. In this sense, Zhong Guo is a weather-beaten existence

If you grew up in the countryside in China, you know that Chinese people are bold and brave. Every village has a few people who are not afraid of death, but they are measured, self-disciplined. The children admire the soldiers who had fought on the front lines, and regard the country as supreme, so the Chinese Nation (Zhong Hua Min Zu) has accumulated and preserved such a large territory in which inhabitants live together for thousands of years. Not sure the Chinese born in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Southeast Asia have similar mental journeys. If you ask the Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States what Zhong Guo is, people in each region or country will have their own opinions, while they are referring to the same vast land between the sea and the 8848-meter mountain in their minds. Therefore, when readers from Zhong Guo and other nations all over the world are reading this book, you, and me — the author will come to different conclusions about China. This is quite normal. It is uncertain that Taiwanese may agree with my model to split the English word Taiwan into pinyin-pronunciation-based Tai Wan. They may consider the term Taiwan is already popular internationally; the British had accepted the name Xiang Gang as Hong Kong, not Hongkong. Hong Kong resembled the pronunciation of the two Chinese characters in Guang Zhou’s dialect, providing evidence to support my proposal to reform China’s geographic name and personal name in English. In this sense, Zhong Guo is a multiple factors concept and a huge aggregation of billions of thoughts.

You understand me, I understand you; you tolerate me, I tolerate you, this is what we call Zhong Guo. Otherwise, how can the 1.4 billion inhabitants live together on the same land? In this sense, Zhong Guo is an inclusive, co-existence space.

Today, it does not matter where the terminology Zhong Guo comes from and whether its definition is strict and precise. Chinese people already know that the center of the world in the past one hundred years was not in Zhong Guo but in the United States. Zhong Guo today is no longer the one in its original sense, though it has the tendency to return to where it belongs to. Many Chinese people still don’t care what Zhong Guo or China means when they say or write the character or the word.

Perhaps, a noun without an accurate category has more development potential than a precisely defined term. Of course, Zhong Guo’s evolution has accompanied by countless conflicts and painstaking events. The Chinese Nation has already had rich experience to cope with challenges from known or unknown sources.

In this book, the author will show the many painful sufferings that Zhong Guo has endured, caused by external or internal elements. You can also say that the history of Zhong Guo is a history of frustration.

Zhong Guo is a complexity of multiple concepts.

I hope I made the concept of Zhong Guo clear.

Author%20photo.jpg

Dr. Yu Wen Yi

Boundless grasses over the plain

Come and go year in year out

Wildfire was not able to eradicate them

The spring wind brings them back

by Bai Ju Yi¹ (772–846 AD), Tang Dynasty, Zhong Guo

To Che Zhen Xiang, my grandmother in heaven

Her forbearance and toil always warm my heart

1.jpg

Hibiscus flower. When my grandmother in heaven sees this flower, she may recall the white-pink hibiscus flower blooming in the fence on the left hand in front of our old house in the spring. She can guess that this book must be written by her grandson Shui Yi who was the number one student of Zhu Xi Primary School, so she is able to find him. Thank you for bringing me up, Po’po!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The manuscript was completed by the end of 2019.

I’m grateful to the reporters, the authors of memoirs, and the copywriter owners for the stories they provided about Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua Preparatory School for American Studies in the United States, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan’s visit to Xi Bai Po, the USSR’s 156 projects to assist China, Mao Ze Dong’s second meeting with President Richard Milhous Nixon, Deng Xiao Ping’s dialogue with the thirty-three scholars, the speeches of Professor Zha Quan Xing at Deng’s Symposium, Wan Li’s investigation in rural An Hui, and reformers in Guang Dong Province, and so on. Your information are invaluable assets for anyone who tries to discover the truth hiding in Chinese history. Without your meticulous and accurate works, this book will not be perfect.

Part Three cited the Statistical Bulletin of the National Economic and Social Development by the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2018, and the Chronicle of Events of the People’s Republic of China (October 1949-September 2019) by the History and Literature Research Institute of Central Committee of the CPC. These documents are public information, but international readers may not find them. Thanks for the authors and their agents.

The publishing agreement was signed on June 10, 2021. I’m especially grateful to Ms. Karen Stansberry, Senior Publishing Consultant, Ms. Raven Tan, Check in Coordinator of Author House, Ms. Dana Scott, Mr. Leigh Allen, production supervisor, and Caleb Ritchey, Marketing Consultant, it is you make this book and another book The United States of America: Facts, Analysis, and Strategy published successfully.

I would like to thank Wikipedia for providing the priceless reference.

Finally, I should give my greatest gratitude to my wife Zhao Keren and my daughter Yu Pu Lin for your assistance. My son Yu Zi Zhao, a film director, reviewed the manuscript thoroughly. We made the comparison of the historic events between China and the Western countries. He contributed comments from the perspectives of the ancient China’s history, the ancient Greek philosophy, the Egypt, the evolution of Roma and the countries around Mediterranean, the relationship and balance between French and UK, the German, Russia, Japan, India, middle east, and other Asian nations, which enriched the thoughts of the author. Thanks again.

Yu Wen Yi

June 10, 2021

New York

FOREWORD

When I was assigned to teach at Tsinghua University, Beijing (Bei Jing) in 1993, I lived in No.2 Building on the campus. In the summer, after dinner, overlooking the sunset illuminating the West Mountains from afar, you could feel like having been living in ancient China. Occasionally, there were a few family members of the teachers, who squatted on the ground, holding their bowls with food to eat in front of their house — the whole country was still far from modernization then.

At one nightfall moment, while we were standing at the side entrance of the No. 2 Building for dinner, a new teacher, who graduated from Columbia University, was also there. His doctoral dissertation was on China’s four-modernization. I asked him what the conclusion he got, and the response was that China’s four-modernization should be handled in accordance with China’s national condition. I blurted out what the conclusion was! What we wanted to know was the Western world’s solution, right? Decades have passed, China (Zhong Guo) has encountered so many problems along the way, and almost stumbled over, but, finally, stands up... Honestly, Columbia’s conclusion seems correct.

One hundred years ago, inhabitants in mainland China (mainland Zhong Guo) still lived in a self-sufficient circle. They didn’t know enough about the world that was dominated by the West, nor did they adapt well until today. Modern China is a very humiliating and contradictory mixture. Why? Because the people felt their country was not strong enough — this psychology has been extended until today. Historic Zhong Guo is like a huge ship sailing on the Suez Canal. Most of the time, it passed normally; haphazardly, it turned unsteady and run aground.

The twenty-first century is an era when countries around the world try to understand China, much like that people around the world try to study English. China Studies is becoming a specialized subject, just like the American studies that is very popular in Asia. Therefore, it is necessary to have a special book on Zhong Guo for global readers.

This book tried to meet the demands. It is created on the basis of the author’s unique life, school, and work experience. The author lives in the most exciting era in Chinese history — the initiation of the Economic System Reform and Opening-up to the Outside World (hereinafter referred to as the Reform) — a movement of one billion people involved. Zhong Guo was featured by the repeated failures for the past 180 years. In 1977, a small broken twig by the roadside was a small fortune that a peasant would take it home. It was completely unforeseeable for me that China can grow to be as strong as it is today when I was a 16-year-old college student who had no political interest in 1979. Deng Xiaoping (Deng Xiao Ping) said crossing the river by feeling the stones, which means no one could anticipate exactly what China will be after the Reform. Deng Xiao Ping’s contemporaries lived in a spirit world of lofty ideals. From the fourth quarter of 1977, for the younger generations, studying English, science, technology, and learning from the outside world became the true theme in the folk and the government, no matter what the official media stated.

The book is a macro narrative of an ancient Eastern nation in the process of modernization. The stories in the book unfolded the real Chinese cultural context in order to assist our readers to experience a real Zhong Guo. The focus and plotline of the work are concentrated on the fate of the Chinese nation. The success of the Reform is a piece of real evidence that helps the reader to perceive what trajectory of the destiny of Zhong Guo was, is and will be. The success of the Reform has great value in predicting the future of the Chinese nation.

China’s Reform is a special case. This special is even more special because of the differences between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the ruling parties in other countries. The CPC leader’s title is called Secretary. The Western readers who do not understand the organizational structure of CPC cannot accurately grasp the function of the Secretary. The Secretary is the uniform title of the CPC leaders at all levels, from the Central Committee, province committee, city committee, county committee, town committee, to village committee. China’s political and economic system, culture, and population have their uniqueness.

In terms of writing style, in order to make the readers in the United States and internationally understand the unit of measurement, this book uses both the British system and the metric system. Zhong Guo, like Canada, introduced the metric system. The unit of currency in the book is the US dollar, not the RMB yuan. The exchange rate was calculated based on the average exchange rate of the year. China’s geography is also a little analogous to the United States.

The author tried to uphold a neutral stance and rigorous academic analysis. He severely criticized the errors of China’s political decision-making in the past in order to remind the readers of historical lessons. Then, he objectively analyzed the intrinsic reasons for China’s reform, the decision-making process, the heroes, and the international environment, especially the historical moment when the Reform started. The author has a sense of responsibility to write down the epoch-making events he shared because the similar moments of the rise of the Chinese nation happened only once in hundreds or a thousand years. The stories in the book are worth reading, whether you are for or against. After all, it is a vivid record of the deeds of more than one billion people. China’s story can help other countries to avoid detours. In this case, the stories in the book have a long-term, historic reference value.

The study approach of the work has a little similarity to that of the Japanese American writer William G. Ouchi (1943–). His book Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge (1981) was used as the reference when I taught the Management course for MBA at Tsinghua University during 1993–1998. I thought that it was an excellent case study on cross-cultural business management. The comparative study method, for example, the comparison of the timelines of China and that of the United States over the past few decades clearly indicated that the level of social development of the two countries were not on the same track, and there is still a gap in Zhong Guo at present though the distance has been narrowing. Since the study of the US was the subject of another book, I deleted the Appendix about the US before the publication of this book. However, our reader can still feel the international perspective of the book.

The book is a collection of analyses of vast amounts of facts and figures. Having lived in New York State for ten years, the author understood all kinds of praise and criticism of Zhong Guo in Chinese circles and beyond. He also found that the criticism had become impetus to China’s progress. Today, East Asia is not more chaotic, but more stable.

Zhong Guo defines its socialism as socialism with Chinese characteristics. Chinese are afraid of being poor. Hence, the Chinese people are no longer interested in those deceptive political tricks. There is nothing more important than eating well, dressing warm, and keeping the family safe. Full supply has been China’s biggest politics.

Zhong Guo is a highly inclusive country. The main ethnic group is the Han Chinese, which is also a fusion of various ethnic groups. The variety of skin colors and face shapes of Han people tell you that they have experienced the full integration of multiple ethnic groups and pearls of wisdom. Zhong Guo is a self-reliant country, but it also wants to be helped and praised as any other nation expects. Chinese people are also keen to help others. This book affirmed the USSR’s help to Zhong Guo and highlighted the United States, UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Japan, and other western countries for training China’s high-end talents, pointing out the foreign aid’s importance to the success of the Reform. China’s political system is not the one that does not accept criticism from the outside. In fact, Zhong Guo has been actively carried out political reforms, on the prerequisite of keeping the big country’s integrity.

According to the historical pattern of the destiny of China’s dynasty, it is inferred that there is a high probability that China’s current stable situation will last for 200 more years. Both personal experience and theoretical research have shown the trend — China is changing for the better. Moreover, this positive change will be strengthened rather than weakened by the continued input of positive factors. The new generation of Chinese youth knows more about the world. They are better educated, more aware of human rights, and more capable of independent thinking. This positive tendency is also the viewpoint of many international scholars.

The chapters were organized on topics as follows: 1. background: China’s Geography, Civilization, and history (1839–1949), and Chinese folklife as that in Fu River, Jiang Xi Province; 2. international environment, such as 156 USSR-assisted projects and 136 Sino-US talks; 3. domestic situation as the Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Fu River; 4. intellectuals in China, such as A Family and Thirty-three Scholars; 5. China’s outstanding reform heroes, such as Deng Xiao Ping, Wan Li, and the leaders of Guang Dong Province in the early 1980s; 6. the analysis of the 42-year consecutive fast economic development and China’s unique approach of success, as the two chapters How to Succeed and the Unique Approach did; 7. the anticipation of the Destiny of Chinese Nation and China’s future strategic vision.

All notes were made by the author.

International readers may know Mao Tse-tung but may not know his Mandarin-pronounced name Mao Ze Dong in Zhong Guo. You may not know Chinese call Shanghai as Shang Hai — The Chinese pronunciation has a very short, almost inaudible pause between Shang and Hai. In order to create a better Chinese context, all Chinese names in the book are written according to Chinese custom, in a tandem arrangement, surname first, given name behind. For example, the name Deng Xiaoping, Deng is the surname, Xiaoping is the given name.

For the convenience of readers’ pronunciation, the author used the Mandarin Chinese pinyin to mark Chinese geographical names, such as Yan’an (Yan An), Changan Avenue (Chang An Avenue), Linchuan (Lin Chuan) County, and so on. What the changes made is the returning of the English expression of the Chinese names and titles to the mandarin pronunciation and Han characters.

Chinese personal name, as the given name Xiaoping, is consisted of two Chinese Han characters Xiao and Ping. To help the international readers to spell them correctly, this book introduced the Chinese habit — Mandarin Chinese pinyin so the name Deng Xiaoping in English world is expressed here in Chinese way — Deng Xiao Ping. Hope the author’s language service experiment will help the foreign readers to overcome the pronunciation difficulty — This is the first attempt in the world to fully popularize place names and personal names in Mandarin Chinese in an English work.

However, some inherent names of institutions, such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Yanjing University, Tongmenghui, KMT, etc., as they were registered or incorporated, shall not be changed, and some names, such as Chinatown, Macao, are retained in this book.

Since a country’s name is approved by the Constitution, the People’s Republic of China is kept as it is, nothing changed in the book. So does the local government title as the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality for which no changes made.

As for adjective Chinese and alike, we keep it as it is, no change made.

The history of Zhong Guo is long, but this book made it simple. Taking August 4, 1977 as the watershed, Chinese history is divided into the prehistory and the post-history of August 4, 1977. As for why it is so classified, you will know its necessity after reading this book. This is an initiative work in the study of China’s history. The contents are divided into three parts. For readers who want to understand the past history of Zhong Guo, please turn to Part One; if your interesting is contemporary Zhong Guo and the Reform, please read Part Two; if your concern is Zhong Guo in the future, go to Part Three directly. This book presents the full spectrum of Zhong Guo, but you can read a single Part independently.

If there is any information, please don’t hesitate to send an email to the author at [e-mail]. Welcome your invaluable comments and suggestions in advance.

PART ONE

Before August 4, 1977

CHAPTER I

China’s Geography and Civilization

BEFORE THE BIRTH OF MANKIND, the Indian plate of the crust hit the central-southern part of Eurasia. The huge bulge hence formed divided the Eurasian continent into two parts, east, and west, leaving only the north part for the two sides to communicate — the Silk Road later. The huge bump is the Qing Hai–Tibet (Xi Zang) Plateau. At the foot of the high mountains, three ancient civilizations were born: China (Zhong Guo) to the east, India to the south, and Iraq[¹] to the west. The towering Qing Hai–Tibet Plateau, with the Mongolian Plateau to its northeast, and the Yun Nan-Gui Zhou Plateau to its southeast, enclose the plain at the foot of the mountains from the west, north, and south, respectively. The high Qing Hai-Tibet Plateau also donates two large rivers to the vast plain, flowing from the west to the east. The big plain backed by three plateaus on three sides is Zhong Guo.

In ancient times, at the turn of summer and autumn, white tigers were everywhere on the slopes of the Qing Hai–Tibet Plateau; at the turn of autumn and winter, turtles in rivers, lakes, and on grasslands were looking for their homes on the Mongolian plateau; at the turn of winter and spring, huge green/blue dragons rose from the rivers, lakes and swamps that connected the east sea; at the turn of spring and summer, the Yun Nan (Yun Nan) – Gui Zhou (Gui Zhou) Plateau was full of red, slender and spitting-fire birds; all year round, the yellow dragons traveled freely between the ground, the river, and the sky, sometimes they stayed on the vast plain. Later there were human beings, who also lived on the huge plain that surrounded by the plateaus on three sides and the sea to the east.

The aboriginal people saw animals from the four directions were impressed by their magic and uniqueness, and gradually established a sense of orientation. The direction of the green/blue dragons lived was defined as East; the direction of the white tigers lived was designated as West; the place the red long birds lived was designated as South; the place of the black turtle lived was designated as North; and the place where the yellow dragon and human beings lived were designated as Central. Looking up at the stars in the sky, the original inhabitants used the animal images to identify the nebula in the sky— they even found that these animals also lived in the sky, so the latter was respectfully called the four Divine Beasts.³⁴

In the United States, the original Indian inhabitants have their myths. There is a Turtle Building by the river of Niagara Falls, New York. The design idea came from the Iroquois Creation Myth⁵. It is said that the earth was created on the back of a big turtle by the collective working of animals, and the mother of human being received their help then survived and developed.

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Geographically, from the 3D perspective, Zhong Guo’s terrain looks like a giant sofa that sets by and faces the sea. Look Zhong Guo’s west boundary, the Qing Hai-Tibet Plateau⁶ stretches approximately 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) from north to south and 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers) from east to west, much like the back of the sofa. It is the world’s highest and largest plateau, with an area of 970,000 square miles (2,500,000 square kilometers), 1.5 times the area of Alaska⁷. The average elevation is 2.8 miles (4,500 meters). The earth’s top two Mountains are inside: Mount Zhumulangma (a/k/a Mount Everest, 5.5 miles or 8,848 meters in height) and the K2 (5.4 miles or 8,611 meters in height). The former separates Zhong Guo and Nepal, the latter separates Zhong Guo and Pakistan.

The Qing Hai-Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the Roof of the World. Therefore, the sofa has a very solid back; on the northeast side (the northwest boundary of Zhong Guo), close to the Qing Hai-Tibet Plateau, there is a Mongolia Plateau⁸ with an area of 1,200,000 square miles (3,200,000 square kilometers), the elevation ranges from 0.6 miles to 0.9 miles (1,000–1,500 meters), much like the left arm of the sofa; on the southeast of the Qing Hai-Tibet Plateau, there is a Yungui Plateau⁹ with an area of 193,050 square mile (500,000 square kilometers)¹⁰, the length (from west to east) is 621 miles(1,000 kilometer)，the width (from north to south) is 249–497 miles (400–800 kilometers)，the elevation is 0.3-1.6 miles (500–2,500 m), much like the right arm of the sofa. The vast plain among the feet of those Plateaus plus the east and south coastal regions together look like the seat of the sofa. So, Zhong Guo is not only a secure but also a conform place by nature.

Zhong Guo’s terrain is a natural barrier against foreign invaders. In the time when the cavalry was not developed, the north part of Zhong Guo was safe; in the time when the navigation technology had not developed, the east and south parts were safe; in the time when the technology was not developed, Siberia, the north part of the Mongolian Plateau was too cold to live (like the north part of Canada). God assigned a good place for the Chinese to live inside.

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Diagram 1 The plateaus, plain, and the sea of

Zhong Guo — a sofa‐shaped terrain

The area of Zhong Guo’s territory[1] is 3,706,580 square miles (9,600,000 square kilometers); the area of the United States territory[²] is 3,800,000 square miles (9,800,000 square kilometers). The two countries have almost the same sizes[³]. The border shape of mainland Zhong Guo is almost similar to that of the contiguous United States. The latitude of mainland Zhong Guo is between