Economic Development in China after the Cultural Revolution

Abstract

In the past of a century the economic development in the People's Republic of China (PRC) has suffered from two severe setbacks. The first one was the economic crisis in 1959-61, which was triggered by the Great Leap Forward and the Commune Movement but was aggravated by the withdrawal of the Soviet technical assistance. The second disruption, known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, erupted in the latter part of 1966 and lasted for at least three years. While events in the two turmoil periods are well known, their impacts on the economy cannot be assessed in quantitative terms even today due to the lack of data.