By 1999, the CCP estimated that the group had seventy million adherents; that year, more than ten thousand of them staged a silent protest in Tiananmen Square. An arrest warrant was issued for Li Hongzhi, the group founder, who had by then immigrated to Queens, New York. The Chinese National Congress subsequently passed, and began [[violent]]ly enforcing, an "anti-cult law".<ref>http://web.archive.org/web/20101127131821/https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/16/world/china-expels-53-foreign-falun-gong-followers.html</ref>
==Deng reform era==PostAfter Mao's death, the policy of modernization along Western lines has led to a remarkable rate of economic growth in the industrial cities, which have pulled in millions of peasants from the still poor rural areas. Slack environmental standards have led to serious pollution problems. The modern Chinese economy has benefited from investments from Taiwan and Hong Kong. They jumped far ahead of China by 1970 in terms of technology, and in recent years have invested in mainland industries. These two factors have changed the Chinese economy, from a command economy to a more socialist state, with the Chinese economy increasingly in the hands of privately owned businesses, not state-or military-run enterprises. However, after several years the trend reversed, as it is in the start that those who are related to the political power are treated differently than the rest of the enterprises. Since 1980 China has enjoyed the highest economic growth rates in the world. Suddenly in mid-2008, the growth rate slowed sharply from 11% a year to only 5.5%. Much of the economy was geared to exports and building factories for exports to the United States and Japan. When the [[Financial Crisis of 2008]] hit, exports fell off and prices for industrial products like steel fell in half. Many factories were shut down. The decline has especially hit steel, cement, and the construction industry. The government in November 2008 announced a $586 billion stimulus program to build roads, dams, electric grids, and other infrastructure projects that are designed to supplement the international market.<ref>David Barboza, "Great Engine of China Slows ," [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/business/worldbusiness/26chinasteel.html?_r=1 ''New York Times'' Nov. 25, 2008]</ref> Since 1979, China has largely rejected socialism and embraced capitalism, while maintaining Communist party rule. Private ownership of the means of production has dramatically reduced poverty and increased wealth, especially in the cities but also in rural areas. Nationally the GDP (in 2007 prices) has exploded from 2 trillion yuan in 1980 to 25 trillion in 2007. As late as 1980 60% of the people in rural China lives in poverty; by 2007 fewer than 5% did. Grain production has grown 300 to 500 tons per person, and rural income per person has soared from a few hundred yuan in 1980 to over 4000.<ref>See ''Economist'' Dec. 13, 2008</ref> The reforms reformed and opened its economy. The Chinese leadership adopted a more pragmatic perspective on many political and socioeconomic problems. China's economic transformation had a profound impact not only on China but on the world. The market-oriented reforms China implemented since the 1980s unleashed individual initiative and entrepreneurship. The result was the largest reduction of poverty and one of the fastest increases in income levels ever seen. China today is the second-largest economy in the world. It sustained average economic growth of over 9.5% up to the [[Crash of 2008]]. In 2006 its $2.76 trillion economy was about one-fifth the size of the U.S. economy. By 2021 it's $15 trillion dollar economy was more than three-fourths. In the 1980s, China tried to combine central planning with market-oriented reforms to increase productivity, living standards, and technological quality without exacerbating inflation, unemployment, and budget deficits. China pursued agricultural reforms, dismantling the commune system and introducing a household-based system that provided peasants greater decision-making in agricultural activities. The government also encouraged nonagricultural activities such as village enterprises in rural areas, and promoted more self-management for state-owned enterprises, increased competition in the marketplace, and facilitated direct contact between Chinese and foreign trading enterprises. China also relied more on foreign financing and imports. During the 1980s, these reforms led to average annual rates of growth of 10% in agricultural and industrial output. Rural per capita real income doubled. China became self-sufficient in grain production; rural industries accounted for 23% of agricultural output, helping absorb surplus labor in the countryside. The variety of light industrial and consumer goods increased. Reforms began in the fiscal, financial, banking, price-setting, and labor systems. By the late 1980s, however, the economy had become overheated with increasing rates of inflation. At the end of 1988, in reaction to a surge of inflation caused by accelerated price reforms, the leadership introduced an [[Ascesis|austerity]] program. [[File:Shanghai China CIA.jpg|thumb|left|280px|The Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai overlooks the Huangpu River.]]China's economy regained momentum in the early 1990s. During a visit to southern China in early 1992, China's paramount leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, made a series of political pronouncements designed to reinvigorate the process of economic reform. The 14th Party Congress later in the year backed Deng's renewed push for market reforms, stating that China's key task in the 1990s was to create a "socialist market economy." The 10-year development plan for the 1990s stressed continuity in the political system with bolder reform of the economic system. China's economy grew at an average rate of 10% per year during the period 1990–2004, the highest growth rate in the world. China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10.0% in 2003, and even faster, 10.1%, in 2004, and 9.9% in 2005 despite attempts by the government to cool the economy. China's total trade in 2006 surpassed $1.76 trillion, making China the world's third-largest trading nation after the U.S. and Germany. Such high growth is necessary if China is to generate the 15 million jobs needed annually—roughly the size of Ecuador or Cambodia—to employ new entrants into the job market. Nevertheless, serious imbalances exist behind the spectacular trade performance, high investment flows, and high GDP growth. High numbers of non-performing loans weigh down the state-run banking system. Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are still a drag on growth, despite announced efforts to sell, merge, or close the vast majority of SOEs. Social and economic indicators have improved since reforms were launched, but rising inequality is evident between the more highly developed coastal provinces and the less developed, poorer inland regions. According to World Bank estimates, more than 152 million people in China in 2003—mostly in rural areas of the lagging inland provinces—still live in poverty, on consumption of less than U.S. $1 a day. Following the Chinese Communist Party's Third Plenum, held in October 2003, Chinese legislators unveiled several proposed amendments to the state constitution. One of the most significant was a proposal to provide protection for private property rights. Legislators also indicated there would be a new emphasis on certain aspects of overall government economic policy, including efforts to reduce unemployment (now in the 8-10% range in urban areas), to rebalance income distribution between urban and rural regions, and to maintain economic growth while protecting the environment and improving social equity. The National People's Congress approved the amendments when it met in March 2004. The Fifth Plenum in October 2005 approved the 11th Five-Year Economic Program aimed at building a "harmonious society" through a more balanced wealth distribution and improved education, medical care, and social security. China used the Summer Olympics in 2008 as a platform of propagating the so-called "economic development" to the world, while it is still a Communist country in its core of the past two decades since the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. The new leadership is committed to generating greater economic development in the interior and providing more services to those who do not live in China's coastal areas. In 2015, the Communist-controlled Mainland China (or self-proclaimed People's Republic) denied being as a market economy. ==Economic reforms== China's economy, based on rice and wheat farming, was generally prosperous until the 18th century. Population pressures and failure to adopt new technology led to an impoverished nation by 1900. The legitimate successor regime to the Qing Dynasty owes bond investors in the United States, Britain, France, and Germany $1.6 Trillion in sovereign debt. The People's Republic of China has not assumed responsibility for the debt.<ref>A series of bonds issued by the Qing government a century ago are once again questioning the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist regime that is now in a difficult dilemma it can not get out of. The market value of the bonds is worth $1.6 trillion USD, and if the CCP wants to prove itself to be the legitimate government of China, then it has to pay back these bonds. If the CCP refuses to acknowledge this debt, then it must recognize that the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the legitimate government of China. Recently, Americans who hold the “Hukuang Railway Bond”—issued by the Qing Dynasty to the United States, Britain, France, and Germany to raise funds for the construction of the Huguang Railways that run from Hunan to Guangzhou—initiated a movement demanding the Chinese Communist Party repay the debt. The chairman of the American Bondholders Foundation (ABF), Jonna Bianco, said: “These bonds were originally issued under the Republic of China, what we know today is Taiwan. And the Communist regime who went in and took over mainland China and became the official government in 1949. It becomes their responsibility to honor this debt. The CCP, the Chinese Communist Party’s debt, just as they paid Great Britain in 1987 for the very same bond. It is successor government doctrine.” However, the CCP has always refused to cash in on bonds held by Americans. It selectively defaulted, deliberately not repaying the money owed to American investors. As early as 1973, before the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the U.S. representative told the CCP during negotiations that although the debt does not have to be repaid immediately, the U.S. will not exempt it. Although the CCP government claims to be the only legal government in China and has the right to inherit the sovereignty of Hong Kong left by the Qing government, it does not recognize the right to inherit the "Hukuang Railway Bonds" issued by the Qing government. Bianco said that the previous U.S. administrations did not attach any importance to the issue of the Huguang Railway bond, but President Trump is different from them. “Thank God for President Donald J. Trump, who is listening to this issue. I have met with him personally. He has committed his support behind this issue. He is the only president that has held China accountable to play by the same rules, to have fair trades, to have as he said perfectly, reciprocity, and that’s what Americans expect, that’s what the world expects,” she said. According to data from the US Treasury Department, as of May 2020, the CCP holds US $1.08 trillion in US Treasury bonds. Bianco suggested that the Trump administration exchange bonds with the CCP, that is, use the Hukuang Railway Bonds to repay the U.S. Treasury bonds held by the CCP. Bianco said that she is confident that this matter will succeed.</small><br>https://youtu.be/8B4L_dqU79c</ref> ===GDP===During the Post-Maoist Reform era after 1978, China introduced a system known as capitalist management of socialism, which it operates under today. China is not a true market economy, as the key resources, such as land, is not privately owned; the so-called collective ownership is still de facto government ownership. Moreover, in the Communist Regime's Constitution, Mainland China is still officially a Communist country. [[File:Concrete-in-china-info.png|right|350px|thumb|In the 3 years from 2011 to 2014, China used more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century.]]In 1985, based on [[IMF]] data,<ref>https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/SPROLLs/world-economic-outlook-databases</ref> China was the eleventh largest economy, with a GDP of $313 billion, below the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the Netherlands. China quickly got to tenth in 1990, with its $398 billion. China managed to get to eight in just five years, with a GDP of $737 billion. However, during this time, the Russian economy was collapsing, which meant that China went to seventh. The Italian economy got overtaken by the Chinese economy of $1.215 trillion in 2000. However, China nearly tied France and England around the $2.5 trillion mark. When the [[2008 financial crisis]] hit America and Europe, China boomed even further, becoming the 3rd largest economy in 2010, nearly tying Japan, with a $6 trillion GDP. In 2015 China grew to $11 trillion, clearly becoming the 2nd largest economy. China led the world in production of ships, iron, steel, textiles, cement, chemicals, toys, electronics, railcars, aircraft, solar cells, shoes, cellphones, air conditioners, and personal computers. More than 80% of medical pharma materials came from China. In rare earth minerals, which are vital to so many high technology industries, by 2021 China had an 80% lock on the supply. Other sectors the CCP means to dominate include satellite technology, [[AI]], cyber, quantum computing and communications, battery development and manufacturing, and robotics. In 2020, China hit 100 trillion yuan ($15.21 trillion), when the United States went down to $20 trillion, and Japan went down to $5 trillion, because of the [[CCP pandemic]]. China had a ''per capita'' income below [[Mexico]] but above the [[Dominican Republic]]. 40% of the population lives on less than $5 per day. ==Post-Deng China==
Deng's health deteriorated in the years prior to his death in 1997. [[Jiang Zemin]] gradually assumed control of the day-to-day functions of government. In November 2002, [[Hu Jintao]] was selected leader. In 1992, he had been designated by Deng Xiaoping as the "core" of the fourth generation leaders. On March 14, 2013 [[Xi Jinping]] was "elected" as new president.<ref>https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9929619/Xi-Jinping-elected-Chinas-president-Telegraph-dispatch.html</ref>
[[File:National Stadium, Beijing.jpg|thumb|300px|National Stadium, Beijing.]]
By 2017, the imposition of [[tariff]]s by U.S. President [[Donald J. Trump]] began to redress the imbalance. China's economy was developed over those early decades of the 21st century as a coastal, manufacturing economy entirely dependent on exports. Young people left their home villages in the countryside to seek work in coastal factories. The prosperity was all built on access to the U.S. consumer market, and Americans' appetite for cheap manufactured goods. Scant attention was paid to developing a domestic service sector economy, while the vast interior remained impoverished, and increasingly so as young people abandoned rural agricultural work for urban factory work.
====Military developments====
The establishment of a professional military force equipped with modern weapons and doctrine was the last of the "Four Modernizations" announced by Zhou Enlai and supported by Deng Xiaoping. In keeping with Deng's mandate to reform, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), which includes the strategic nuclear forces, army, navy, and air force, demobilized millions of men and women beginning in 1978 and introduced modern methods in such areas as recruitment and manpower, strategy, and education and training.
[[File:Mao corona.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Chinese communists suppressed news of the covid outbreak for two months, arrested doctors who posted on social media about it, and did not advise the people of Wuhan until after the virus spread throughout the world.]]
China's power-projection capability is limited but has grown. China has acquired some advanced weapons systems from abroad, including Sovremmeny destroyers, SU-27 and SU-30 aircraft, and Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia, and continued to develop domestic production capabilities, such as for the domestically-developed J-10 fighter aircraft. However, much of its air and naval forces continue to be based on 1960s-era technology. As the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, released February 2006, noted, the U.S. shares with other countries a concern about the pace, scope, and direction of China's military modernization. We view military exchanges, visits, and other forms of engagement are useful tools in promoting transparency, provided they have substance and are fully reciprocal. Regularized exchanges and contact also have the significant benefit of building confidence, reducing the possibility of accidents, and providing the lines of communication that are essential in ensuring that episodes such as the April 2001 EP-3 aircraft incident do not escalate into major crises. During their April 2006 meeting, President Bush and President Hu agreed to increase officer exchanges and to begin a strategic nuclear dialogue between STRATCOM and the Chinese military's strategic missile command. U.S. and Chinese militaries are also considering ways in which we might cooperate on disaster assistance relief. However, it should be remembered that the Military is still under the Party's control. It is not to be equated with the European and American Armed forces.
====Tiananmen Square massacre====
[[File:Wmr1a.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Remains of what used to be [[human being]]s in the Tiananmen Square [[democracy]] protests.<ref>http://www.cnd.org/HYPLAN/yawei/june4th/</ref>]]
:{{See also|Tiananmen Square massacre}}
In the months prior to the fall of the [[Berlin Wall]], pro-democracy movements worldwide flourished and socialism fell into disrepute. In an object lesson about the duplicity of socialist slogans, buzzwords, and phrases geared toward the youth and the naive - China's People's Army killed 10,000 of China's own people.<ref>"[https://dailycaller.com/2017/12/24/chinese-killed-at-least-10000-at-tiananmen-square-newly-declassified-documents-claim/ Chinese Killed At Least 10,000 At Tiananmen Square, Newly Declassified Documents Claim]", ''Daily Caller'', 12/24/2017.</ref> In fact, China's People's Army has killed more of China's own people than it has ever been used against any foreign enemy in its entire history.
====WTO membership====
[[File:2018 trade deficit.jpg|thumb|500px|right|U.S. trade deficit with China. The difference between the red line and blue line represents an outflow of American wealth - [[capitalism|capital]] that could be used to create American jobs rather than jobs in China and prosperity for the [[Chinese Communist Party]].]]
Despite the CCP's human rights abuses in the Tiananmen massacre, no trade sanctions were ever leveled by Western Powers and globalists. China was rewarded for its human rights abuses in 2001, despite the absence of reforms, by being welcomed into the World Trade Organization with full membership and a year later granted [[Most Favored Nation]] trade status by the [[U.S. Congress]]. China formally joined the World Trade Organization ([[WTO]]) in December 2001.
Contrary to Cold War era belief that free trade would encourage non-democratic countries to become more democratic - an argument used to sell globalization - experience ultimately proved free trade only strengthens tyrannical regimes. By 2020, the notion that [[democracy]] and free trade go hand-in-hand had been thoroughly discredited.
====Most Favored Nation status with the U.S.====
:{{See also|Most favored nation}}
As China has been growing in power, it has also become increasingly aggressive on the international stage.<ref>Scaliger, Charles (February 19, 2019). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/print-magazine/item/31388-china-s-new-aggression-on-the-world-stage China’s New Aggression on the World Stage]. ''The New American''. Retrieved February 19, 2019.<br>See also: