China's economy today if Mao died in '56, (ie, before the GLF & CR)?

raharris1973

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If Mao had died in '56, would his successors have avoided the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution?

If so, would the lack of damage related to these events lead to reforms and growth in earlier decades, making for a richer China today?

Or might it have led to a period of Soviet style industrialization and urbanization, causing China's economy to outperform OTL from the late 50s through the 80s, but then face a slow-down later because safer and more stable party bureaucrats have a stronger stake in the planned economy and succeed in resisting market reforms?
 
Population control would be implemented sooner (was it already?)


Additionally Maoism would be less about Mao and more about popular civil wars (which is somewhat true IRL, but not completely)
 
Less deaths almost certainly, but OTL capitalist reforms wouldve been harder to come about since pure communism would not have been discredited, so It's possible TtL PRC lags behind OTL PRc
 
Population control would be implemented sooner (was it already?)


Additionally Maoism would be less about Mao and more about popular civil wars (which is somewhat true IRL, but not completely)
That's partly Mao's fault anyway, he encouraged a population boom (in what was already the worlds most populous country) in the '50's and 60's because he thought they would need the extra bodies to survive a nuclear war (China would have the most people left afterwards). This was stupid (since more people just means more people to be nuked or die in the aftermath and would probably crash the population even worse when the food ran out) but by the time Mao died the Chinese population was so high the party feared a Malthusian catastrophe and went to far the other way.

Without Mao the population is probably a bit lower or around the same but without the need to arrest Mao's bomb the one child policy probably is avoided. That in turn would hopefully avoid the profound gender imbalance and the artificially accelerated aging population problem. Both these are going to hit China much harder and earlier than they normally would for a country at this stage in its development and even with the end of one child its still going to cause the country serious socio-economic problems for decades to come.
 
That's partly Mao's fault anyway, he encouraged a population boom (in what was already the worlds most populous country) in the '50's and 60's because he thought they would need the extra bodies to survive a nuclear war (China would have the most people left afterwards).
Where did you hear that? It seems kind of stupid. As far as I know Mao didn't want the population boom.
 
Less deaths almost certainly, but OTL capitalist reforms wouldve been harder to come about since pure communism would not have been discredited, so It's possible TtL PRC lags behind OTL PRc

I'm willing to say that, without the reforms, China dies in 1989 assuming history goes along roughly the same course.
 
The great leap forward would still go ahead as there was a consensus for it in 1958 and those for capitalistic reform were in the minority of the party.
However in OTL after a year it was noticed to be not working by the party and there was a desire to change course. Mao overrode everyone by getting the people behind him, but with a different leader this is likely not to occur and a lot of potential growth would not lost.

As for Mao dying in the fifties the POD could be him slipping and dying at a pool party he held to humiliate Khruschev or having something fatal occur relating to his swims. PRC/USSR relations wouldn't decline as much too.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...miliation-and-the-sino-soviet-split-80852370/
 
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