We had our fourth class today, and it was all about the transition of the country from Mao Zedong to its current place in the world. Our teacher spoke of the travesties during though this time period and how they were overcome, mostly by Mao’s successors, especially Deng Xiaoping. One of the most horrifying of these events was The Great Leap Forward. New ways of accounting for and growing grain borrowed from the Russians led to huge food shortages throughout the country, eventually leading to the deaths of upwards of 50 million people. Another horrible movement was the Backyard Furnace movement, which inspired many people to attempt their own smelting, leading to many deaths and the loss of many of the countries metal. The economy was further slowed by the Cultural Revolution in later years.
It was not until Deng Xiaoping came to power that food security was achieved and many communist principles and strangleholds were loosened. He adopted some capitalist policies that led the country to recovery and even growth, and would eventually start the nation on its path to becoming a world super power. To me, it was interesting, though horrifying, to hear about all of the failed Mao movements and How Maoist communism held the country back and even led to the deaths of tens of millions. Though I stand from capitalist perspective and have basically had “COMMUNISM IS BAD” stamped in all of my textbooks, this is where I see the true failings of the Maoist state. The inability to react to and change bad policies, the lack of encouragement of personal achievement, and no promise of social mobility held the country back from what it could have been. It would have been interesting to see what China would have been if Deng Xiaoping (or a similarly minded person) had taken over earlier. China would have even more control of the world economy; it could’ve even supplanted the U.S. in its role.
Now most of China is privately owned, but it is experiencing an even worse unemployment pandemic than we are. Not only that, but the One Child policies have made many parents not give birth to girls, but to have an abortion and try for a male child. This has caused a huge gender gap in the population, as high as 40 million more boys than girls. This could be devastating to the Chinese economy if not handled properly in the coming years.
After class we headed over to Hanwon for our next company visit. This company also had an employee who could not speak English well. In fact, our guide knew no English at all. The entire conversation was limited by the language barrier. And all communication went through our teacher. In addition to the language barrier, this was the company I was least interested in. Their products, while immensely useful to Eastern Asian countries, were basically electronic toys with sophisticated technology inside of them. I’m not sure why we visited this company. The product that struck me the most was their scanners and scanning programming were incredibly complex and functional. These would be their only products that would have a good deal of success in the United States. Their eBooks also worked well, but it would be hard for them to move into an already crowded market. After finishing there we returned to the hotel and later went to a karaoke restaurant and rented a room. Though the song selection was poor, we all had a lot of fun.