LIBERATION WAS NEVER THE INTENT: The People’s Republic of China Was Born in Chains: The Communist Party calls 1949 a liberation. But China was far freer beforehand. “By the time Mao died in 1976, living standards for the population were lower than in 1949. Hundreds of millions of people, it has often been claimed, were lifted out of poverty by the Chinese Communist Party after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1979. But it is the people who lifted themselves out of poverty after having been stripped of their land and property, deprived of their most basic freedoms, impoverished, beaten, and starved during three decades of forced collectivization. The Cultural Revolution severely battered the ranks of the Communist Party, and villagers everywhere used the opportunity to quietly reconnect with the past, as they opened black markets, shared out collective assets, took back the land, and opened underground factories. Well before Deng came to power, large parts of the countryside had already abandoned the planned economy.”