How China Became Prosperous 

I grew up in rural China in 70's and early 80's. From my own personal experience, I think the education on Chinese history helped me to work hard. We were well aware that we were far behind in terms of modern science and technology, kids were educated to work hard to "catch up".

For the best part of 2500 years, China is the world's most powerful country, except the past 200 years. So what you're studying isn't the anomaly, but a return to the norm.

Culture plays the biggest role in the speed of rise while luck, natural conditions and good leadership initiates the ability to rise. Competitive culture is great at the beginning but if abused like for example South Korea where capitalists got addicted to the money produced by the high efficiency but neglected its toll on society, society rotted and got hallowed from within because of unbridled competitiveness. Once a country reaches a certain level of development, competitiveness should be decreased to heal an overheated society and maintain its health and well being.

Great video!! Thank you for provide this in-depth analysis in such a short time!! Another factor that might also contribute to the rise was the high literacy level by the 1980s. China had practiced free compulsory education for over thirty years even under extreme poverty between the 1950s and 1980s, first for six years of primary school, later for up to 9 years of middle school. I spent 5 years in a village between 1970 and 1975 in the northeast of China. There was extreme poverty in the village with some people had to supplement their food with weeds and grass in spring time (the hardest time for peasents). However, every child was required to go to school. The teachers from the village public school would visit every family to persuade the parent to send their children to school, especially the girls because many parent prefer the girls to stay at home and help with the house chores and even raising their younger siblings. Girls are not valued as much as the boys. Yet the teacher would try very hard to convince the parents to send all their children to school to finish at least primary school so that they can read and write. By the 1980s, almost all the young Chinese can read and write quite well. As is known now, we are also quite good with math. This means the young people can quickly learn the necessary skills required for industrial jobs even though they might not know anything about it before. The higher education sector also have expanded exponentially since the 1980s. In the early 1980s, only 5% high school graduates was able to get a placement at a university. Now, more than 70% high school graduates go to university. Until 1997, if a high school graduate passed the entry score for the placement at a university in his or her entry examination for higher education, he or she was exempt from tuition fees and accommodation was free. He or she could also pay a small fee if he or she was a few score short of the entry requirement. Today, you would need about $1000 for tuition fee a year plus living expenses. It is still quite cheap comparing to the what people pay for tertiary education around the world. I would say the education level of the Chinese population probably also played a crucial role in the quick rise of China in its economy. I would love to have a conversation with your team on subjects related to China. As a Chinese living abroad, I appreciate and am very grateful for your effort of explaining Chinese affairs to the world. Videos like this one are rare and extremely valuable to reduce misunderstanding and hostility against Chinese people. Thank you!!

As a Chinese student studying at the University of Sydney, I don't think China is a superpower, she is still a developing country, and she still needs a long time to work hard. Moreover, I hope that the future world will be multipolar, without American hegemony, Chinese hegemony, and European hegemony. The most important thing is to let the people of the world live in a stable and harmonious world.

Brief but insightful analysis. Amazing someone who has never been to China has some cogent analysis. It shows being open minded and willing to research and investigate make a big difference in the quality of reporting. In comparison to mainstream corporate media's China "reporting", which is mostly smear campaign and propaganda, this kind of citizen reporting helps bridge difference and further understanding. Huge kudos to Chapman and look forward to more of your good work.

Another point is in the 80s, China had the good fortune of a vast (and quite rich) diaspora in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan etc. Those were the people who primarily bankrolled the light manufacturing that set China on its course to be the shop floor to the world. Japanese, US and European countries came after that phase. Back in the 1980s and 90s, China used to send hoards of officials on study trips to Singapore and if you look at China even today, you see a lot of Singapore in it... Huge SOEs dominating the economy, superb urban planning, suzhou-style industrial parks, strict control of the populace, 1 party system management etc. Singapore especially shared a lot with China on governance and such after Deng xiaoping visited Singapore in 1978 and was impressed by how the majority ethnic-Chinese state was doing. They even had special university and policy programs for Chinese officials in Singapore. Subsequently, they also learned a lot from studying the Japanese system which Singapore also looked at in the 60s and 70s...tripartite relations between govt, industry and labour as an example. But today, the student has overtaken the teachers and has raced ahead in many aspects. A lot of the learning is now going the other way.

I sort of disagree with you on the luck condition where China is surrounded by wealthy countries. What about Mexico, Caribbeans or central America if that luck condition holds? They are adjacent or close to the US, the most wealthy and developed country in the world. But they haven't benefited much from the decades of American prosperity.

Malaysian Chinese taipan, took the affords to invest heavy to break the ice when China opened for foreign investments. Many still did not have confidence in Communist China when the stability of the law was still obscured. Malaysian Companies have difficulties in investing in their own country. The biggest company and riches person decided to moved his assets to Hong Kong, where he invested heavily in China. With the success there, other countries Chinese taipan have confidence which created a flood of foreign investments. Deng xiao ping did a good job. Hopefully other late comer countries can follow soon.

I recently read about "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and it was very interesting cuz it talks about how Deng, correctly, looked at Marx's writing itself and how Marx believed that communism could only happen in industrialized, capitalist systems. He didn't believe you could go from feudalism to communism. Capitalism is a necessity. Political leadership that sticks to ideology over material concerns are not only silly, but, one could even argue, counter to the materialism lens of dialectical materialism.

Unbiased and open-minded are the key words I think everyone might derive from watching this excellent and educational video.

Brilliant, Thank you for this clear and insightful piece ! I really like the way you break it down. In the leadership section, did you consider "political stability" as another reason for success ? Seems to me that a country with a stable governance over decades can have long term strategy and bring it to life efficiently over time. Whereas our democraties are handicapped by recurrent power shift and thus policy changes ( even more problematic when democraties malfunction and turn into political circus ).

In addition to a well produced video, the contributors in the comment section are civil, and respectful. There were no name calling and spouting nonsense. Thank you, everyone.

Very good perspective on China's "unprecedented growth", however should not dismiss the rise of Asian Tigers, and specifically Singapore. Singapore has special relationship with China, as the only Chinese-majority country & city outside of China, that had shown path to rise in a single generation - illiterate coolies in world's largest slums to first world city-state. Since having similar culture and especially language, the majority Chinese in Singapore could speak Mandarin, Singapore was key base for China to learn. Knowing China-Japan history, they would not have find it easy to replicate Meiji modernization but just as reference. Here are some statements below, and good study of China's growth and society could be seen in much smaller setting in Singapore. "To date, Singapore is the only country that China’s top leaders have publicly claimed as a learning model. " "Xi Jinping, then Vice President of the People’s Republic of China, said in a meeting with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew: “Mr Deng Xiaoping repeatedly mentioned the need to learn from Singapore when he was alive. This was necessary in the past, and remains so in the present and future.” In November 2015, when President Xi visited Singapore, during a lecture delivered at the National University of Singapore entitled “Forging a Strong Partnership to Enhance Prosperity of Asia,” he reiterated Deng’s initiative and discussed the various ways China had put the knowledge it gained through Singapore into practice. Western scholar Elizabeth C. Economy remarked that Xi’s reforms would turn China into “a Singapore on steroids”." "Since then, over 50,000 cadres have been sent to Singapore on almost a monthly basis to study every aspect of the so-called “Singapore model.”Footnote2 It has been suggested that Singapore constitutes only the second role model for China after the Soviet Union, and has been the only country called on by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders to learn from since the late 1970s.Footnote3 In a recent Asia Barometer survey, the top two learning models in Chinese ordinary people's eyes are the US and Singapore.Footnote4" www.thinkchina.sg/construction-singapore-model-mainland-china www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/china-and-the-singapore-model-perspectives-from-midlevel-cadres-and-implications-for-transnational-knowledge-transfer/932FD456103899E6DFCB961F53C88BA8

I should be pacing myself through your videos, because I'll be sad when I've finished them all and have to wait for the next one. But my mind is so hungry for all this! Please keep doing what you're doing. It's valuable and we appreciate it! 💙

First of all, I applaud you to state the facts without the anti-China narrative which our medias are constantly doing. Second, the success of a company depends its people. 996 is one of the way to compete. The early days of Wall Street is 996. Every year, bottom 5% goes. Yep, that was furious competition, and that was time of highly productive. No longer. I guess there should be a balance between productivity and personal life. A burned out individual will eventually quit.

As a Chinese, I will tell you why. One is that Chinese culture attaches great importance to education. Chinese people have high intelligence, mathematics, physics and chemistry are very good, this is the foundation.In addition, China is a one-party country, and a policy can last for decades. No opposition party will obstruct the implementation of the policy, but there are good and bad here, and a good leadership team is needed. There is another reason, and the most important reason. Chinese people are hardworking. This is the core of Chinese culture for thousands of years. Chinese people in mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore or other countries have this characteristic.

As Ryan is concerned, I think rather than forcing an encyclopedia-like ability to cover every aspect of a subject comprehensively, one needs to marvel at his amazing talent to pin-point the exact quote from an ocean of official documents, presenting his observations with surgical precision in a 16 min video while not missing the bull's eye (主要矛盾). For a foreigner like himself, it's almost like harpooning the exact labeled fish in the vastness of the Pacific. I think his 16 minutes version is better than Richard Wolve's hour-long narrative on the same subject.

Yes, any 14 year old in China can tell you that build order matters to your early and midgame strategy.

A big part that is missed is that Chinese diaspora was also educated and willing to help. If Chinese can already do it in every Chinatown in the world, can do it in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore etc, of course Chinese on the mainland can also do it. They just needed to learn, and learn they did in earnest after Deng. Hong Kong and Shenzhen are good examples of learning and experimentation. Also learning from Silicon Valley and western companies of course on micro level

Also, the US politicians are mostly lawyers and the Chinese politicians are mostly scientists and engineers. I think this makes a difference.

Agree with all what you have said, especially #2, gradualism, as they called it "crossing the river by feeling the stones", unlike the Soviet Union and India.

I think "Google It" brought up a significant point here. The transfer of technology from Soviet and industrialization process started in the 50"s are usually skipped when talking about China rise. Another important point Ryan didn't mention is land reform. Not the later liberation of land but the initial land reform to turn private ownership to collective farm. This is too much for western people I guess so they probably think it was a bad thing. If you look at Japan, because Japan didn't do land reform at Meiji reform and land ownership was very concentrated, it led to dire consequence later because peasants without land need to be deployed somewhere so it led to war. One of key reform after WWII in Japan was land reform; so was Taiwan after MKT fled there after civil war. Also because of this , I think it is wrong to say China copied Meiji reform since the situation was very different at the time.

If you look at those earlier economic powerhouse of East Asia like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong amd Singapore You will notice a common characteristics among these countries/area during their high growth era That is their government were to some degree of authoritarian

Very interesting indeed. I would add two more factors attributable to the Communist regime pre-1970 that this video didn’t touch on, but made China stand out among other Third World countries. These are the land reform in the 1950s that eliminated big landlords, and the establishment of the heavy industry sector around the same time which, although nowhere near being impressive by Western standards, did obviate the crossing from 0 to 1 for China in heavy industry. This also brought to mind a long-standing question I had regarding the debate between “shock therapy” and gradualism. I would naturally assume gradualism is the true, quintessential manifestation of the Anglo-Saxon Conservatism, which explained the success and excellence on all fronts of the Anglo sphere for the past few centuries, and should have been the natural doctrine of choice by the US when advising other countries. So why was “shock therapy” all the rage? I would attribute this not so much to malice as to the blind drive by American academia to play the eternal iconoclast, with or without merit, in order to advance professors and students up the ladder. In some sense, it can be viewed as an American corporate culture run amok in the academia. Everything is measured by Growth! One sees this in biological and health sciences, medicine (vaccine!), education theory, sociology, (dare I say, even physics!), etc., and why not political and economic theory, and why not applying it on the Russians, the Ecuadorans, the Peruvians, the Indonesians, so that we all get grants, PhD’s, awards, and tenured professorships? Yeah, Russians and Indonesians are no different from the lab mice we just tried our new vaccines on, right? The papers and conference talks are the most important things! Imagine if the gamble on the Russians paid off, we would all be Gurus at Harvard and UChicago with our names etched in the hallway plaques! If not? Screw the Russians, of course! God Bless those who took the pills prescribed by the American academia, like the Russians and Indonesians! For this, I would especially congratulate the Chinese leadership of the 1970s for their exceptional self-confidence and firm anchor in their own fundamentals!

Ryan, you are the only RU-vidr whom I'm willing to listen and watch word by word. I can't agree any more as mentioned in the very beginning of the video, that you are a person with brain, reading comprehension, etc. That's rare.

30-40 years ago, Japan was China's ONE & ONLY rich neighbor Japan. S. Korea was also a relatively poor developing country in the 80's & 90's. China's initial growth was driven by exports to US and Europe which are not even in the same neighborhood. At the same time Mexico has a rich neighbor up north but you don't see similar levels of growth.

Criminally underated channel, another great video👍

This is one of the most objective and unbiased analyses of China's progress I have seen so far. Well done!

Ryan, very good video! I have watched the video in its entirety and read many comments. I would like to add one more point here. In the third point, you mentioned culture. Although there is some truth, I think you did not grasp the real reason. China is a country with a history of more than 5,000 years and has a very broad cultural heritage. In traditional Chinese culture, many ideas and principles have been summarized, and even summarized into proverbs. Therefore, when every Chinese is growing and learning , In any place, at any time, are receiving education in traditional culture. In traditional culture, industriousness, unity, love of learning, respect for teachers, observe the discipline, etc., are all necessary for every Chinese to be cultivated, which enables the vast majority of Chinese people to be quickly trained into excellent workers. This is the real culture.

Ryan, I applaud you for doing the research and sticking to the facts. Unlike majority of the Western media, your analysis and conclusions are uncorrupted by political ideologies or malice. The world need more people like you!

When is this channel gonna blow up ?!

I grew up and educated through college in China, I would say this video's content is the most close to what I have experienced and participated. I appreciate your efforts on this brilliant work!

You've obviously done your homework, I agree with pretty much everything you have said here. I would add one thing, the timing of their industrialization was perfect from a demographic perspective. The generation from before the one child policy was in their prime working age meaning that they had a huge amount of workers with few burdens in the form of children and elderly people. We are currently seeing this demographic dividend disappear, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

Excellent video. I would add that a significant contribution to China's rise was trade with the United States, and America's willingness to destroy our own industries and factories. I often see American machines running in factories there, literally unbolted from the floor in America and transported in a shipping container to China. But now, China has taken all the "learnings" and is innovating on its own, and doesn't need anything from any country. Most Americans have no idea that China has not only caught up, but is sailing right past us, and quickly.

I never knew that the Chinese leadership had visited other countries to learn about the most prudent path for industrialization. Kudos to them!

RU-vid would have a major positive impact on world politics if they made Ryan's content required listening. I love how he sees all the bubbles, and subtlety deflates the ridiculous radical bubbles from the left-wing to the right wing. I know hate is easier than learning, but Americans need to learn first, not hate first (which ultimately excludes learning). And this man is a National treasure, and if lesser intelligent people need a roll model, Mr. Chapman is the guy for them.

Just the comments are worth watching the video. Keep finding myself distacted reading the civil, interesting feed back. Very nice

Some RU-vidrs brought up a really good question “why China’s poorer neighbors getting richer and richer alone with China, but the US, the #1 economy sice 150 years ago, it’s neighbors aren’t, if not worse? What’s going on here?

Your videos are pretty uniquely re-watchable, algorithm must be picking up on that big time Keep it upp and thank you Ryan

Great analysis, it mentioned the 3 factors that many main stream media neglected. But it's still not 100% correct and doesn't fully answer the question. For example, the geographical location and some other natural factors of China are not that great, when China started to grow in 80s-90s, it's far away from 2 biggest markets of the world, America and Europe. It also lack some key natural resources for manufacturing. Although China has some rich neighbors in the east which might helped its economy growth, it's surrounded by poor neighbors in other direction. To me the most important factor is, China did many right things at the right time, which is hard to replicate. I agree Chinese culture is a big part of it, but it's not just work culture, there are much more of it, like the culture of embracing differences, the culture of families taking care of each other for the whole life etc.

I really enjoy listening/viewing your videos, Ryan Chapman. Extremely informative without demanding your audience agree with you.

Great video, insanelly well produced, as always. I'd like to remark that I think you missed one key point: how China was only able to do all that by using the dialectical materialism philosophy approach after the revolution. As a Brazilian, I see a lot of resemblance between China and Brazil regarding the luck and culture factors you mentioned, here we also feel cultural pressure to study and work a lot (maybe all capitalist countries do?), we have our own "GAOKAO" (vestibular), etc. Mostly everyone I know, regardlessly of having a left or right political view, believes the government should invest much more in education and industrialization, but no winning politician will ever do that, because it goes very much again the interests of our dominant bourgeoisie. That's why I believe it's impossible for such a country to achieve so high without either the people forcefully breaking up with its upper-upper class, such as happened in China, or with a very heavy imperialistic capitalism spending fortunes with military and propaganda such as the US, at the cost of many lifes and suffering from poor countries.

Agree that China has become a superpower. Really enjoyed your last video on China or rather China & US Political Philosophy. Articulate, original, discerning and overall concise. Thanks brother. Love ya.

Ironically I’ve been asking this question today and low and behold this video comes out

When a country consistently stays strong for most part of history, you cannot just look at recent factors directly affecting the rise of 20th century china. You need to look at macro factors that remains true for the past 2k years. China's world GDP output had fluctuated between 20% to 50% of world GDP share. This means from an economic pov, on average china has consistently been atleast as strong as the US is now if not stronger for the past 2k years. Trying to search for quantifiable factors making china strong will give you tunnel vision. Concentrating on the culture, the philosophy and the prevailing political system is where u will find the answer.

I think this video kind of overlook how important Marxism was to Deng and the leadership of the party. Deng made it clear that China would remain in the path of socialism and he understood that China must develop its productive forces, which would be the material conditions for socialist society. In this sense, Deng was much more an orthodox Marxist than Mao, who believed China could achieve socialism without the basis of capitalist conditions.

Clam, unbiased, precise analysis! Pretty Impressive!

The following is what I borrowed from a Malaysian RU-vidr’s comment: I’m from Malaysia. China has traded with Malaysia for 2000 years. In those years, they had been the world’s biggest powers many times. Never once they sent troops to take our land. Admiral Zhenghe came to Malacca five times, in gigantic fleets, and a flagship eight times the size of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa Maria. He could have seized Malacca easily, but he did not. In 1511, the Portuguese came. In 1642, the Dutch came. In the 18th century the British came. We were colonised by each, one after another. When China wanted spices from India, they traded with the Indians. When they wanted gems, they traded with the Persian. They didn’t take lands. The only time China expanded beyond their current borders was in Yuan Dynasty, when Genghis and his descendants Ogedei Khan, Guyuk Khan & Kublai Khan concurred China, Mid Asia and Eastern Europe. But Yuan Dynasty, although being based in China, was a part of the Mongolian Empire. Then came the Century of Humiliation. Britain smuggled opium into China to dope the population, a strategy to turn the trade deficit around, after the British could not find enough silver to pay the Qing Dynasty in their tea and porcelain trades. After the opium warehouses were burned down and ports were closed by the Chinese in ordered to curb opium, the British started the Opium War I, which China lost. Hong Kong was forced to be surrendered to the British in a peace talk (Nanjing Treaty). The British owned 90% of the opium market in China, during that time, Queen Victoria was the world’s biggest drug baron. The remaining 10% was owned by American merchants from Boston. Many of Boston’s institutions were built with profit from opium. After 12 years of Nanjing Treaty, the West started getting really really greedy. The British wanted the Qing government: 1. To open the borders of China to allow goods coming in and out freely, and tax free. 2. Make opium legal in China. Insane requests, Qing government said no. The British and French (with supports from the US), started Opium War II with China, which again, China lost. The Anglo-French military raided the Summer Palace, and threatened to burn down the Imperial Palace, the Qing government was forced to pay with ports, free business zones, 300,000 kilograms of silver and Kowloon was taken. Since then, China’s resources flew out freely through these business zones and ports. In the subsequent amendment to the treaties, Chinese people were sold overseas to serve as labor. In 1900, China suffered attacks by the 8-National Alliance (Empire of Japan, Russian Empire, British Empire (including India), France, USA, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary). Innocent Chinese civilians in Peking (Beijing now) were murdered, buildings were destroyed & women were raped. The Imperial Palace was raided, and treasures ended up in museums like the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris. In late 1930s China was occupied by the Japanese in WWII. Millions of Chinese died during the occupancy. 300,000 Chinese died in Nanjing Massacre alone. Mao brought China together again from the shambles. There were peace and unity for some time. But Mao’s later reign saw sufferings and deaths from famine and power struggles. Then came Deng Xiao Ping and his infamous “black-cat and white-cat” story. His preference in pragmatism than ideologies has transformed China. This thinking allowed China to evolve all the time to adapt to the actual needs in the country, instead of rigidly bounded to ideologies. It also signified the death of Communism in actually practice in China. The current Socialism+Meritocracy+Market Economy model fits the Chinese like gloves, and it propels the uprise of China. Singapore has a similar model, and has been arguably more successful than Hong Kong, because Hong Kong being gateway to China, was riding on the economic boom in China, while Singapore had no one to gain from. In just 30 years, the CPC have moved 800 millions of people out from poverty. The rate of growth is unprecedented in human history. They have built the biggest mobile network, by far the biggest high speed rail network in the world, and they have become a behemoth in infrastructure. They made a fishing village called Shenzhen into the world’s second largest technological centre after the Silicon Valley. They are growing into a technological power house. It has the most elaborate e-commerce and cashless payment system in the world. They have launched exploration to Mars. The Chinese are living a good life and China has become one of the safest countries in the world. The level of patriotism in the country has reached an unprecedented height. For all of the achievements, the West has nothing good to say about it. China suffers from intense anti-China propagandas from the West. Western Media used the keyword “Communist” to instil fear and hatred towards China. Everything China does is negatively reported. They claimed China used slave labor in making iPhones. The truth was, Apple was the most profitable company in the world, it took most of the profit, leave some to Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) and little to the labor. They claimed China was inhuman with one-child policy. At the same time, they accused China of polluting the earth with its huge population. The fact is the Chinese consume just 30% of energy per capita compared to the US. Minorities in China Show me any currency in the world which also prints the language of its ethinc minorities. Chinese bank notes show 5 languages of 5 minorities living in China, including Tibetan and Uyghur. They claimed China underwent ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. The fact is China has a policy which priorities ethnic minorities. For a long time, the ethnic minorities were allowed to have two children and the majority Han only allowed one. The minorities are allowed a lower score for university intakes. Muslims students get Halal food at the university cafeteria. There are 39,000 mosque in China, and 2100 in the US. China has about 3 times more mosque per muslim than the US. When terrorist attacks happened in Xinjiang, China had two choices: 1. Re-educate the Uighur extremists before they turned terrorists. 2. Let them be, after they launch attacks and killed innocent people, bomb their homes. China chose 1 to solve problem from the root and not to do killing. How the US solve terrorism? Fire missiles from battleships, drop bombs from the sky. During the pandemic, When China took extreme measures to lockdown the people, they were accused of being inhuman. When China recovered swiftly because of the extreme measures, they were accused of lying about the actual numbers. When China’s cases became so low that they could provide medical support to other countries, they were accused of politically motivated. Western Media always have reasons to bash China. Just like any country, there are irresponsible individuals from China which do bad and dirty things, but the China government overall has done very well. But I hear this comment over and over by people from the West: I like Chinese people, but the CPC is evil. What they really want is the Chinese to change the government, because the current one is too good. Fortunately China is not a multi-party democratic country, otherwise the opposition party in China will be supported by notorious NGOs (Non-Government Organization) of the USA, like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), to topple the ruling party. The US and the British couldn’t crack Mainland China, so they work on Hong Kong. Of all the ex-British colonial countries, only the Hong Kongers were offered BNOs by the British. Because the UK would like the Hong Kongers to think they are British citizens, not Chinese. A divide-and-conquer strategy, which they often used in Color Revolutions around the world. They resort to low dirty tricks like detaining Huawei’s CFO & banning Huawei. They raised a silly trade war which benefits no one. Trade deficit always exist between a developing and a developed country. USA is like a luxury car seller who ask a farmer: why am I always buying your vegetables and you haven’t bought any of my cars? When the Chinese were making socks for the world 30 years ago, the world let it be. But when Chinese started to make high technology products, like Huawei and DJI, it caused red-alert. Because when Western and Japanese products are equal to Chinese in technologies, they could never match the Chinese in prices. First world countries want China to continue in making socks. Instead of stepping up themselves, they want to pull China down. The recent movement by the US against China has a very important background. When Libya, Iran, and China decided to ditch the US dollar in oil trades, Gaddafi’s was killed by the US, Iran was being sanctioned by the US, and now it’s China’s turn. The US has been printing money out of nothing. The only reason why the US Dollar is still widely accepted, is because it’s the only currency which oil is allowed to be traded with. The US has an agreement with Saudi that oil must be traded in US dollar ONLY. Without the petrol-dollar status, the US dollars will sink, and America will fall. Therefore anyone trying to disobey this order will be eliminated. China will soon use a gold-backed crypto-currency, the alarms in the White House go off like mad. China’s achievements and success have been by hard work. Not by looting and plundering the world. I have deep respect and love for China for all the suffering and the hardship they endured, but now I feel happy for them. China is not rising, they are going back to where they belong. Good luck China. --Nihilist

I have very high respect for you knowing how much research you have done to come up with such detailed videos.

It also helped that they weren't spending billions and Trillions of dollars on endless wars and military occupations, hence money left to accomplish other things and invest in technology and their economy.

i visited China three years ago. I haven’t seen homeless people in anywhere. I go out at night more safe In Los Angeles,New York,and Chicago.

they did it without exploiting and colonizing other countries

Thank you for the clear, calm, and researched explanation. I especially like that you tossed an X factor in there, that's just fun.

THANKS FOR TELLING THE WORLD UR INSIGHTFUL ANALYSIS WHY CHINA GREW SO RICH.

I hate how you carry yourself by slightly moving every word you say but at the same time I love your videos 😂 keep it up man

Btw, I really like how you explain this because I’ve always been explained or discussed about this in dim sum or dinner so it’s always Chinese, but hearing it explained to me in English helps me know how to explain it to others in English because political lingo is different in different cultures.

China has seen wealth for centuries, no millennia. The mistake they made was when the Ming Dynasty sent Zheng He on a global voyage and concluded that the world had little to offer the sophisticated Chinese civilization. They turned inwards and got caught on the wrong foot by the industrialised West first and Japan later. Then too, you had to drug the country before you could extract anything. The lesson is learnt and remembered very well. China's rise is simply a return to form. Wait till the confident younger generation asserts itself. My guess is that they will not be as restrained as the old timers to insults and attempts at subjugation once more. The world is better with a stronger China

Something not so mentioned but VERY important was the ethnically Chinese origin people in Singapore, HK, Malaysia, Taiwan (especially Taiwan and HK...) who invested in China, often had relatives there and a common language but were already in relatively developed societies with increasing wages which made China attractive for them to move their manufacturing operations.

There is a little island south of Malaysia that kicked the commies out in the 50s and was run by the best father ever of a country, Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore, was a major catalyst in the Asian region. China took note.

As a Chinese, I don't think what you said is the root reason. Because any development requires action, and action requires will. Without the will to develop and serve the people,...nothing happens. Because the rulers are always a few people, even if the country is very poor, but because of the large population, the rulers can still live a luxurious life by exploiting the people, so the rulers themselves have no need for development. Therefore, the difficulty is: how to make the country's rulers have a strong will to develop the country.. China's answer is: CCP. CCP has a strong desire to develop the country and serve the people, so it has the action to explore various development modes, so it has the rapid development of China. Therefore, CCP is the fundamental reason for China's development. why the CCP has a strong willingness to develop, it will take long time to explain. This is something Westerners have been ignoring or unwilling to believe, which is why they are so shocked by China's development but can't find a reasonable reason

The quote by Gu Mu around 5:21 is a direct reference of Mao‘s essay „Against Book Learning”

A sincere study yet still with much misunderstanding. In China the heavy industry were built up in 1950-1970s first with the help of USSR for a-156-project-supporting plan ，but USSR stopped the plan abruptly for politically reasons a few years later and took away all the technical materials and their experts，and China continued the founding work. Thus after 1978，China‘s economic rose up so quickly with that basis.After China became the world factory，there has been a second wave of heavy industry，yet the first wave is also essential and should not be overlooked. Take Huawei to be an example of 996 should consider the background：Huawei is a company owned by all the workers，every worker worked for a few years could have you share of the company，Ren Zhengfei the founder has only 0.8% of the share，so the workers are actually work for themselves，everyone can cansider themselve as the boss and get their participation in profit every year. Few companies are run in that way.

Chinese history is a book with so much wisdom, you take a good part and disregard the bad part of any "ism"

Almost precisely summarized. But in terms of luck and natural resources, China had some but not really very good. Compared with Aus and the US, China was surrounded by hostile neighbors at the time, there was Russia at the North, Japan and Korea at the east, Indian and Vietnam at the west side, and a hostile US "democracy". Natural resources aspect, China can barely feed its own people at the time, very poor with iron ores and oil reserves, not many vast plains to grow crops. The only luck China got is the hostile relationship between the Soviet and US at the time. The US needed China to counter the Russian force. It became an old game of the three kingdoms. I'd say leadership and culture are the two major factors for China's rise. And thousands of years of recorded history is the biggest gold mine for China. Whatever political events happened in the 21st century have already happened countless times in this land. A old saying in China "use copper as a mirror to dress up; use history as a mirror to know the rise and fall; use people as a mirror to understand gains and losses"

Compared to American college education in terms of cost, China’s college fee is so cheap, almost free, and students don’t have to pay interest on students’ loans, now the rural kids can afford their college educations.

你的分析很公正，身為台灣人的我非常同意。海峽兩岸已經來到共同合作共創未來的時刻了！

Do one on India pls, love your vids :)

There’s a huge factor of Taiwan and HK that helped the modernization of China in the 80s. And the huge push of property and arrogance within the Chinese family structure that pushes the 996 in the first place. There’s a huge shame and cultural expectation within the Chinese culture that no matter how far you’ve gone, they’re still asking when are you getting married and give them a baby boy….to which the answer is, help me look for a wife then we’ll talk, and looking for wifey can get complicated but also hard because girls are so rare and many are either abroad or orphaned, so the trend is marrying outside their province. But the biggest problem to this is property ownership which leads to corruption.

Hard work, sweat, blood and tears.

great video, as a chinese person i am impressed of your knowledge about china

Great content! Love the way you expose the subjects! Super didactic. Thank you so much 😊

It is worth remembering that on a per capita basis much of China is still quite poor. Even Li KeQiang admitted not so long ago that over 600 million Chinese are living on less than RMB 1000 a month. For all the gloss of big cities like ShenZhen, Shanghai, Beijing much of the country is not really in a great situation. The recent power cuts bear out that the infrastructure is not uniform and complete. The wealth disparity in China between areas is HUGE. Sometimes I think with such a big population, linguistic, cultural and even food differences between regions it is easier to look at China like Europe without Russia. The difference between say rural GanSu or NingXia and the largest most developed cities (which tend to be seen by foreigners more so they often get the wrong impression of what the country is really like) is absolutely massive. Like Switzerland vs Moldova or Albania....

Finally, a western made video about China that's not "politically biased"😂Good stuff👍

A country’s development is directly tied to its people’s culture. Chinese are successful everywhere. No matter if they are in South East Asian, Africa or the West. They tend to earn more than other races. A huge part of this is attributed to culture. They are intelligent and industrious. Those 2 are important factors for success.

Belt and road Initiative American’s trying to destroy.

The east's collectivism leading to the average population's success versus the west's individualism leading to certain individuals' success makes a big difference in the future development of a country.

More than 1 billion smart, diligent,obedient people strive for one direction. It is hard for the country not to succeed.

I hope soon you be able to visit China. It's an amazing country.

Brilliant presentation. Love your clarification on “culture” - education is key.

You got the not having fun wrong. In the west when people get their kicks on the job they're referred to as workaholics. The west has an attitude that fun should only come from booze and sex. I wonder how many sport fans they would have without the booze.

I also add the point that the shift from agriculture to industrialisation requires a labour force that is literate. This in turn derives from its education system and the cultural attachment to good education. It is a whole host of factors that makes China what she is today.

People always ignore the fact that the Chinese are smarter and hard-working.

I give 4 reasons 1, materialism, in philosophical term, (not what we usually think). Ie science, 唯物主义， 科学， 2, dialectic thinking, see anything thru pro and con, pragmatic 辩证法思维，思想不僵化 3, patriotism 爱国主义 4, Chinese culture, socialism with Chinese characteristics 中华文化及中国特色社会主义

Great video, but I think you've left out what is probably the biggest factor, and which explains why a country like India can never do what China has done (at least not in India's current form): That crucial factor is China's political governance system - ie. a single party socialist state. This has meant: - FOCUS ON COUNTRY: Political energy is mainly focused on actually building the country and making sure the people are happy, instead of fighting the opposition to win the next election - LONG TERM: They are able to do much longer-term planning for long term benefit (they can afford to spend more time building houses made of bricks which may take a decade, instead of build straw houses in 2 years before the next election) - SPEED: Once a decision is made, it's executed swiftly and efficiently, rightly or wrongly (Covid handling is a good example). There's no opposition party to have to debate with, where having opposition means that, at best, things are done slowly, and at worst, not done at all. NOTE: The above is NOT a commentary on which political governance system is better!! There's no such thing as 'better', only which is more suitable for which country for what period and depending on how it's implemented. So supporters of multi-party democracy, there is no argument here! (Btw, depending on how you define "democracy", it's arguable that China is more democratic than most countries - but let's not go there :) ).

"Fixing the results" of their growth to maintain world confidence is the most important reason for Chinese growth. Fantastic video.

To me it's not just about where China went the past 40 years, but where it's headed now especially relative to us here in America. Having gone there several times for work and personal, I see massive classrooms of highly educated students and a large population willing to work hard as well as cities that are generally safe. In the US, I see schools that are being continually dumbed down and where we no longer focus on academic excellence, but instead on a nebulous concept called "equity" while also praising self-centered whining and over-politicization and grandstanding of pretty much everything. We've also allowed our society to accept or tolerate theft and minor crimes... not even calling them crimes. Meanwhile, we dropped like $10 trillion on a dumb war in Iraq / Afghanistan that's only served to destabilize the region and destabilize our friends in Europe. Seriously, wtf is wrong with us.

A very, very Objective analysis of China's development.

RU-vid needs more content like this.

Every nation got so-called luck in different forms, however,it needs vision, strategies and determination as well as hardworking and strong will to succeed.

Thank you for your efforts of making this video. The documentary of “American Factory” can also explains why China’s manufacturers have been successful in the passed 4 decades. The Chinese worker’s hard working is the main factor.

The most important fact is how China does things. You hear phases such as ``seek the truth from facts'', ``investigate and study the facts first, and make decisions later'', ``periodic reviews of past work to see what has been done right or wrong''. What matters is what has worked and what has not. Political labels are not important. It does not matter it is a black cat or white cat as long as it can catch mice. These practices enable the Chinese leaders make fewer mistakes and make the best possible decisions. They constituted the biggest contributions of Mao. It was he who had brought about these practices. On the other hand, you can see why the West is declining because everything must be politically correct.

Chinese leaders got visions and they are focused. Most of all, they really cared for their people and Chinese people knew it and appreciated it. They became a formidable force no one should dared to challenge. What is their vision? 复兴中华，荣宗耀祖。

In case you don't know, at 3:40 the Chinese sentence on the wall means “To realize happiness for mankind, there is never a savior, nor a God or an Emperor to count on, we (people) are all on our own”. The people in the wall painting represent farmers, workers, students, and all the other social classes.

India also got capitalism n large population and they are nowhere close to china's gdp. So, capitalism isnt the sole answer.

You miss one important point: “Hong Kong” which provides the management experience, financial portal, examples and human capital.

Without dislikes it really makes judging validity of claims much harder at a glance, what a terrible update. Luckily, you source yourself really well and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, most others don't.

THE REAL ECONOMIC MIRACLE happened in America in the 1960s. The biggest decline in poverty in history-measured using a reasonable poverty line for an economy on the cusp of high income-was probably in the United States between 1930 and 1960. Using a poverty line of $21.70 a day, poverty rates fell from 78 to 23% Even at $15 a day, poverty incidence in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea when they made their transitions to high income was less than 10 percent; contrast this with 75 percent in China and 90 percent in rural China. If these numbers are correct, China is decades behind in poverty reduction. To catch up, it needs a radically more ambitious strategy than targeted relief.

The answer is really simple yet being avoided by many westerns, it is the combination of introducing to capitalism and under 1 party rule. Having voting systems and multi parties is great for certain things, but inevitably, different parties will attach each others policies and splitting the country + the people, China in the past had done it (not democracy, but multi parties and fighting each other just like today's USA), and those dynasties all died due to internal conflicts (fights between parties). When you have only 1 dominating party, like the Chinese Communist party (it could be any party or any name, bear in mind the term "Communist" was also introduced to China from the west), it allows the country to make long term strategic plans, and you don't have to worry about the opposing party revoke the work or the plan, or simply deny the plan in congress. Of course like people say, 1 party domination means when the party fucks up, it will fuck up big, like Mao. Sure, shit happens, but similar shits also happened in multi party system countries, the important thing is can the country/party adopt, and make changes. The Chinese party (Communist, I don't like to use this word, because the Communist that you heard from USA is COMPLETELY different from what China has...) had made more systematic changes than any party or country you can imagine, it is not a rigid system. Simply put, if you look at China from the past and look at China of today, you should have one question : if the Chinese system is as bad as USA say, how the fuck did China do it? Or maybe someone, has been lying.

Cesar Vidal in his book A Changing World, discussed China at length. They were managed or trained by the Trilateral Commission