Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up
Markets and opening-up launch China's decades of growth
In December 1978 a Communist Party plenum led by Deng Xiaoping launched the policy of reform and opening-up. Market mechanisms, foreign investment and special economic zones gave China decades of rapid growth and made it one of the world's largest economies.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 2 years later
Europe
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 25 years earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 10 years earlier
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 11 years later
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 11 years later
- 1990 German reunification — 12 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 21 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 17 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 7 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 11 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 13 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 1 year later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 2 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 12 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 15 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 11 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 11 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 4 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 5 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 9 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 8 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 2 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 5 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 24 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 19 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 14 years later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 60)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 48)
- Golda Meir (aged 80)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 79)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 77)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 72)
- Mother Teresa (aged 68)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 67)
- Richard Nixon (aged 65)
- Indira Gandhi (aged 61)