LSE IQ Episode 28 | Is the 21st Century the Chinese century?

Contributor(s): Professor Christopher Coker, Dr Debin Ma, Dr Yu Jie | Welcome to LSE IQ, the award-winning podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. In this episode Sue Windebank asks, “Is the 21st Century the Chinese century?” This month sees the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War. Having overthrown the nationalist government of the Republic of China, Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic on October 1st in Tiananmen Square. The last 70 years have been tumultuous for the People’s Republic of China. Under Mao it experienced economic break down and societal chaos. Famously the Great Leap Forward, a campaign designed to industrialise and modernise the economy, led to the largest famine in history, with millions of people dying of starvation. And yet today, after widespread market-economy reforms started by Deng Xiaoping in the 1970s, China is the second largest economy in the