Time is a funny thing, because time is relative. Sixty years in terms of a human life is a long time, it is over half of our life. But when you are thinking about history sixty years is nothing. Although Sixty years seems like a long time from the beginning of the Culture Revolution with Mao to the end of the reform period with Deng, it is not in the grand scheme of things.  China in that 60 year period changed from a revolutionary party to a ruling party. Within this time period there are six major changes that took place: revolution to reform , struggle to harmony, dictatorship to democracy, rule of man to rule of law and decentralized, and state to society. You cannot point any of these topics as extremely more important then the other topics, because they almost all inter link in someway.

I think the element  that is craziest to investigate is the revolution to reform aspect. The fact that Mao tried to carry out a forever lasting revolution is interesting  in itself because here you are with a leader that wants armed struggle and violence permanently. It puzzles me that he could think that China could be stable and last while constantly in a state of revolution. Yes, the revolution had a lot of short term positive effects like : increased standard of living, boosted economy, literacy rates improved and the international status was enhanced. But during a revolution rule of man takes over and defies all rule of law. I don’t understand how people could live under those violent conditions. I would think that the “natural disaster” of millions of Chinese starving to death would have made it evident that things need to change, but that was not the case. China in those 60 years was just complete chaos and its hard to believe the country came out of that chaos in any way.