Reform and Opening Up — The Policy That Lifted Hundreds of Millions Out of Poverty

At the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping launched sweeping market reforms — de-collectivising agriculture, permitting private enterprise, and opening coastal regions to foreign investment. Over the following four decades, this single strategic shift is credited with lifting an estimated 800 million people out of extreme poverty, the largest poverty reduction in human history.

Deng Xiaoping — Chinese Communist Party

In power 1978–1989