Tiananmen crackdown deepens the divide between growth and political voice

The National People’s Congress approved Hainan Province and its designation as the largest SEZ. The decision accelerated land development and investment in a peripheral island with a distinct...

Plans to liberalize prices were announced amid inflation and fears of a rapid rise in the cost of living. Households rushed to buy durable goods, exposing the gap between reform rhetoric and...

The Third Plenum of the 13th Central Committee adopted a program of economic readjustment and rectification after overheating and inflation. Credit and investment were tightened, price controls partly...

By late 1988, rapid investment and price pressures had made inflation a major social concern, especially for urban wage earners and pensioners on fixed incomes. Regional growth had also favored...

The 1989 protest movement and its violent suppression marked a major rupture in reform politics. The crisis revealed that market change had not resolved demands for accountability, fairness or...

The Fifth Plenum of the 13th Central Committee emphasized political stability and continued the rectification course. Reform was not wholly abandoned: authorities retained market experiments while...

The central government announced the development and opening of Pudong, extending the coastal strategy to Shanghai’s eastern bank. The project sought to restore Shanghai as a global financial and...

The exchange’s establishment created a new mechanism for securities trading and state-enterprise finance. It signaled that market institutions could be incorporated into a party-led economy. Early...

Shenzhen’s exchange began operating as a regional experiment in corporate finance and market infrastructure. Its location in an SEZ linked domestic institutional innovation to the opening strategy....

The 1989–91 adjustment phase restrained credit and investment, but authorities continued commodity-market experiments and gradual price changes. The period demonstrates that reform moved in cycles and...