A question regarding communism in china

How would you measure the success of a political system? GDP? average life expectancy? infant mortality? the communist worldrevolution? most of this numbers got better under communist rule but you have to remember the state of China after the 2. World War. But lets start in the 18. century. 1842 China had lost the first Opium War against Great Britain and with it most of its sovereignty. The following ~ 100 years China wasnt really more then a playball for western imperialist powers or Japan and in the periods between Warlords, Civil War and infighting. 1912 the old Qing dynasty was overthrowen and the Republic of China was founded. New name but still the same problems. China was fragmented between diffrent Warlords, industrie and infrastructure like the middle ages and foreign powers who didnt really care for chinas sovereignty or existence. In the 1920s the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek had great success in unifying large parts of China. 1927 start of the Chinese Civil War between Koumintang and the Communists. The Communists are on the brink of loosing but then the japanese attacked in 1936 and the Civil war was stoped and Kuomintang and Communists fought together against the new enemy. 1945 Japan surrenders and the Civil War starts again with the leck of a common enemy but now the communists have the upper hand because of heavy losses of the Kuomintang in the 2. World War against the Japanese. 1946 the last troops of the Kuomintang leave mainland China for Formosa/Taiwan. Born is the Peoples Republic of China under Mao. Now Mao knew how to win a War but now he had a land which had seen nothing but war, misery and millions after millions of death in its last ~100 years of existence. Now you surely gonna ask yourself why i tell about around 100 years of non-communist rule in China but you asked how communism worked for china since 1946... but i think you can already tell what my point is. The biggest accomplishment of the communist system in China is that it is a stable system. 1960 the population of China was already around 600 Million people today its 1,3 billion. Sooner or later someone would have thought about that huge marked for western products and the cheap labor china offers. So how did communism work out for China? Pretty fucking good i would say in comparison to the 100 years before. Could a stable democratic System/ or the winning kuomintang after 1946 have the same success? i guess they could have done it too. Maybe a little slower but in the end... Domestic political Systems are not free of influence of globalization and changing geopolitical facts. Japan wasn`t a imperialist expanding nation after the 2. WW, China could concentrate on internal issus like industrialisation and the rebuilding of the nation which would take till the 60s/70s to fully to reallly kick in and bring the economic boost china is famos for today. In the end the chinsese communist party maybe was just at the right time in the right place or the main reason for chinas success today the truth is we will never know because it already happend and we will never know how the alternative would have played out.

/r/history Thread