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China’s reform era helped deliver a half-century of stability, analyst says

The piece argues Beijing’s shift toward economic development after 1978 helped sustain long stretches of relative peace, despite recurring Cold War style tensions and incidents.

Reported · Written up by our desk · China

SCMP Economy describes the idea of a so-called “long peace,” a term associated with Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and contrasts it with how thin the boundary can be between prolonged rivalry and a direct “hot war.” The outlet says the historical gap between World War II and the early 1980s saw more than 40 years without a third world war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The article argues that what looks like luck is better explained by China’s “peaceful rise,” which it says began in 1978 when Beijing launched its “reform and opening up” period. It states that peace has been rare across Chinese history, highlighting cycles of internal unrest and repeated wars even in the early decades after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

According to SCMP Economy, after 1978 China shifted its core priority to economic development, and later diplomatic crises, including a NATO bombing of a Chinese embassy in the former Yugoslavia and a fatal Sino-US aircraft collision in the South China Sea in 2001, did not derail that strategic focus.

The piece concludes that the reform-and-opening era represents one of the longest periods of stability and prosperity across Chinese civilization.

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