Both are still built on the foundation of socialism: 5 year plans, no private land ownership, public ownership commanding the heights of the economy, and a smaller capitalist sector for foreign investment.

From 1949-1978, the Mao Era, China’s GDP grew an average of 7% per annum. Mao sincerely wanted the Chinese to get rich, just that all that wealth must be distributed as equally as possible. This is reflected in China’s 1978 GINI coefficient being a very egalitarian 0.16. A GINI coefficient of zero means that all the income is evenly distributed to all citizens and a coefficient of one means one person has all the income and everybody else has nothing. As a comparison, Sweden’s is currently 0.25, the lowest in the world, China’s is 0.37, the US’s is 0.41 and for all of humanity, 0.65. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

With the advent of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and opening up China’s economy to do battle with Western capitalism(the Deng Era, 1979-2012), China’s economy has grown an average of 10% per annum, while America’s growth averaged 6%. A not-well-known point of history is that many of Deng’s reforms were actually started by Mao, Deng and Zhou Enlai, going back into the 70s and 60s, which helps explain the Mao Era’s phenomenal socioeconomic achievements. These earlier reforms were cleverly rebranded as “new” by Deng. Western capitalists eagerly lapped it up, in their lustful pursuit of Chinese profits, starting in 1978.

These imperial lies have continued into the Deng Era. China is still a communist and socialist country. Baba Beijing has simply used the West’s methods, markets, investment and technology to continue to advance the wellbeing of China’s people, within its non-capitalist economy. This is hard for most Westerners to wrap their heads around, that China has been and continues to be a communist and socialist country, till now, 2015, and will continue to be so as long as Baba Beijing is in power. This explains why the West has been relentlessly trying to overthrow the Communist Party of China (CPC), since liberation in 1949.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

True, Mao absolutely opened it up but Deng turbocharged it in the 90s. I remember seeing Shanghai as a kid and then visiting after graduating. Completely different town. Nothing was the same except the names.