Life In China

After its victory in the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong gained control of most of Mainland China. On 1 October 1949, they established the People's Republic of China as a socialist state headed by a "Democratic Dictatorship" with the CPC as the ruling political party, thus, laying claim as the successor state of the ROC. The central government of the Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island of Taiwan that it had administered at the end of World War II, and moved the ROC government there. Major armed hostilities ceased in 1950 but no peace treaty has been signed.
Beginning in the late 1970s, the Republic of China began the implementation of full, multi-party, representative democracy in the territories still under its control (Taiwan, and a number of smaller islands including Quemoy and Matsu). Today, the ROC has active political participation by all sectors of society. The main cleavage in ROC politics is the issue of eventual political unification with the Chinese mainland vs. formal independence of Taiwan.
After the Chinese Civil War, mainland China saw a dramatic improvement in life expectancy, leading to an explosion in population. A series of disruptive socioeconomic movements started in the late 1950s with the Great Leap Forward and continued in the 1960s with the Cultural Revolution. The Great Chinese Famine resulted in an estimated 30 to 36 million deaths. With the death of its first generation Communist Party leaders such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the PRC began implementing a series of political and economic reforms advocated by Deng Xiaoping that eventually formed the foundation for mainland China's rapid economic development starting in the 1990s.
Post-1978 reforms in mainland China have led to some relaxation of control over many areas of society. However, the PRC government still has almost absolute control over politics, and it continually seeks to eradicate what it perceives as threats to the social, political and economic stability of the country. Examples include the fight against terrorism, jailing of political opponents and journalists, custody regulation of the press, regulation of religion, and suppression of independence/secessionist movements. In 1989, the student protests at Tiananmen Square were violently put to an end by the Chinese military after 15 days of martial law. In 1997, Hong Kong was ceded to the PRC by the United Kingdom, and in 1999, Macau was handed over by Portugal.