The Economy of Communist China

China was once the wealthiest in the world and now it was struggling to feed itself, it was these kinds of conditions that gave rise to the political system that would go on to define china in the latter half of the twentieth century. The nation boasted this wealth for a majority of the last millennia only ever trading places with India, another nation that flies under the radar in recorded history. It even achieved and maintained a level of wealth beyond the typical colonial powers like England, France, and the Netherlands that we typically associate with world domination in this period and it did it through good old fashioned grunt. In this episode, we'll explore how it all went wrong in the 20th century.