process was also facilitated by the fact that, with the
massive outmigration of blacks from the South and the
mechanization of cotton production, economic conditions
had changed so that southern elites were less willing to put
up more of a fight.
R EBIRTH IN C HINA
The Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong
finally overthrew the Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, in
1949. The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on
October 1. The political and economic institutions created
after 1949 were highly extractive. Politically, they featured
the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party. No other
political organization has been allowed in China since then.
Until his death in 1976, Mao entirely dominated the
Communist Party and the government. Accompanying
these authoritarian, extractive political institutions were
highly extractive economic institutions. Mao immediately
nationalized land and abolished all kinds of property rights
in one fell swoop. He had landlords, as well as other
segments he deemed to be against the regime, executed.
The market economy was essentially abolished. People in
rural areas were gradually organized onto communal farms.
Money and wages were replaced by “work points,” which
could be traded for goods. Internal passports were
introduced in 1956 forbidding travel without appropriate
authorization, in order to increase political and economic
control. All industry was similarly nationalized, and Mao
launched an ambitious attempt to promote the rapid
development of industry through the use of “five-year plans,”
modeled on those in the Soviet Union.
As with all extractive institutions, Mao’s regime was
attempting to extract resources from the vast country he
was now controlling. As in the case of the government of
Sierra Leone with its marketing board, the Chinese
Communist Party had a monopoly over the sale of produce,
such as rice and grain, which was used to heavily tax
farmers. The attempts at industrialization turned into the
infamous Great Leap Forward after 1958 with the roll-out of
the second five-year plan. Mao announced that steel output
would double in a year based on small-scale “backyard”