China has made some amazing developments. My personal favorites are the man made islands in the south China sea; the space program; 5g; aviation; high speed rail; and AI.
It is rather unfortunate that China has not been able to develop the following things- motherboards, hard drives, CPU (to rival AMD, Intel), operating systems (to rival windows), web browser (to rival firefox, chrome). As users of computers, I think it is always better to have more alternatives, especially when there are known problems with ie/chrome's ssl errors.
Overall, I can see why many people don't really see the past 40 yrs as development, and especially a lot of the older Chinese who were able to compare the old China with the new one. Sure, China has advanced in some ways, but has actually moved backwards in many others, especially with morals, security, and social programs.
As one Chinese man born in '49 told me, each year was worse than the last since '78. What you see in China is an exchange. China is exchanging honesty, and safety for high rises, and gold chains. During the comunist era, workers and peasants were held to a pedestal. Today, they are marginalized. Now the spotlight is on the bourgeoisie, and they've become the new celebrated stars. Naturally, if I was a worker, or peasant (who are the majority), I would not feel the development. Instead, I would prefer the past. Even as late as 1983, businessmen were required to eat with farmers in order to "invest" in China. But with each year after that, things got worse. The bourgeoisie became more and more wreckless.
A small group of people in China have gotten rich, but for the majority of the people, their lives probably got worse as a result of the reforms. In the 60's, Chinese people were honest. If you lost something, whoever found it would probably return it to you. There was no crime, polution, or coruption. People for the most part, trusted each other. What you ate was organic. There was no problem with food safety. By the 70's, China's policies have shifted to cater to the bourgeoisie, at the expense of the proletariat, however, people didn't feel it yet. Even if you didn't feel it in the 70's, you certainly felt when '80 rolled around. Fast fwd 35yrs later, and all of those problems (coruption, polution, crime) mentioned have become widespread. The people are materialistic. Evil people are being rewarded, and getting rich. And China as a whole has became less united. People no longer trust each other. Society is breaking down. This is why they are trying to bring back Daoism, and Budism, because the people have gotten so out of control (compared with the 60's). Anyone who rides the subway today in China can see how degenerated China has become when they see security checkpoints at every single station. Security checkpoints were something that was unecesary in Beijing's subway in 1969, because people acted civilized. This is the reality that very few people want to talk about, but if you press most older Chinese on this, they will tell you exactly what I am telling you. Even those on the far right will admit that people's morals have declined in the past 35yrs. Another thing I noticed was that Chinese people were healthier in the 70's than they are today. Even when you look at some of the old Chinese, they appear to be healthier, and stronger than the young ones. After China's reforms, a lot of diseases that were'nt around, suddenly became a problem. Illnesses like diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and depression became a problem after the reforms of '78 took place. We can assume that the lifestyles, pollution, and food quality all had something to do with it. What we can gather is that Chinese lifestyles became less healthy after '78. It was like people went back to the pre liberation era, back to gambling, getting drunk, and other illicit activities. Today, you have few opium smokers. Instead, you have people addicted to their cell phones.
Another thing that went in reverse development were the social programs. During the 70's, the goverment gave a lot of assistance to people who needed it. For example, the goverment would take care of the handicapped. Education was mostly free. However, Deng's reforms eliminated these programs, and no one has brought them back. Something people hardly talk about is that one of the main reasons so many students came out to protest in '89 was because Deng began to charge money for tuition.
Not only did the reforms take away social programs, but a lot of people became unemployed when Deng privatized industry. During the early 70's, China had no homeless population, however, after the reforms, people lost their job security, and people became homeless as a result. In the early 70's, it would not be uncommon for goverment officials to go into villages to motivate people to work. However, today, the goverment officials and the people are very far away in their lifestyles. Today, it is every man for himself. That's why it's no surprise that the goverment itself receives much less public support today than it did in 1966.
Kapitalism also splits families up. Dengs reforms forced a lot of villagers to move into the cities to look for jobs. Many parents would be away from their home town most of the year, and only go back to see their kids for holidays. Often times, husbands and wives would now work in different cities. The instability that kapitalism brought also forced people to frequently look for new jobs as jobs were now uncertain, and not permanent. Employers are also able to get away with not paying its workers, something that would have been strictly enforced in the 70's.
One thing we must also remember is that the primary beneficiaries of China's reforms is not China, but the west. The rich Chinese are almost all buying foreign products exclusively. They look down upon China. So what China is doing is allowing a small group of people to get rich, a group who hates China. How can you go right with a plan like that? 33% of rich Chinese are either planning to, or already have emigrated abroad. Needless to say, all their money goes abroad too. Something else that is disturbing too, is how China lends trillions of dollars to foreign countries, with all the money that China makes. Not only that, rich Chinese, after making money off other Chinese people, are spending their money abroad. They send their kids to western countries to be "educated", vacation in the west, and invest their money there. After 35 yrs, China still is only allowed to export cheap goods to the west, while importing very expensive goods from the west. Even sneakers like Lining (not very expensive) are banned in the west. Volkswagon, Renault, and Ford are all allowed to sell in China, but Chinese cars are banned in the west.
With all that, China has also become much weaker as a result. There's no doubt that China's weapons have developed well. There's no doubt that even the most radical inperialist will admit the high quality of China's arsenal. However, weapons aren't everything. Power comes in many forms. Although China has very advanced guns, China falls behind on soft power. What you must understand is, as part of the reforms, China had given up its role as a world leader. The first generation of leaders set up all the proper chess pieces for China to become a world leader, only to have Deng, and Ye throw it all away. Today's China has become so weak that it has to assure the "international community" that it doesn't interfere, nor does it seek to be a world leader. Contrast this with China in '66, and the third world was looking at China as their new leader. China took the charge in world politics, and was unafraid to be the only challenger to the west at the time. You can actually look up archived copies of the Beijing Weekly, and see how assertive China used to be in its criticism towards the west. I don't know if old recordings of CRI are still out there, but the CRI was also very critical of the west back in the 60's, similarly to how the west is critical of China. CRI and Beijing Weekly made it clear to the world what their positions were, and who they supported. However, when '78 came around, China surrendered, and gave up its influence around the world, and decided to accomodate the west. If you read the Chinese newspapers today, such as the Global Times, you hardly see any criticism of the west. CRI usually has nothing bad to say about the west. Instead of liberating Taiwan, China was now willing to accept whatever the US proposed as long as TW doesn't officially declare independence. What's worse is when you hear the Chinese media actually praise of the west. Instead of being a leader, China was now a follower. This is why you never really saw any peasant uprisings around the world after the late 70's. Most people have forgotten, but there once was a time when China was not scared to back an anti western riots in Singapore. China had huge networks of pro Chinese fighters, and leaders from Peru, all the way to Ethiopia, and back again. Of all the rejime changes in the past 35 years, it seems that most of them have been pro western in nature (ie USSR, Ukraine, Libya, Afganistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Yemen, El Salvador) to name a few.
Today, very few fighters, or leaders pledge allegiance to China. Even Chinese people themselves are disloyal to China. Go to Hong Kong, and see how many pro Chinese people you can find. Today's HK populace is staunchly pro western, and anti Chinese. Let me put it to you this way. In 1967, Hongers rioted against the British for China. In 2014, Hongers rioted against China for the west. What does that tell you? One thing's for sure, although China has stopped backing anti western movements, the west has never stopped backing anti Chinese movements. This is one reason why the west today, solidly has an upper hand. In this sense, today's China is only a shadow of its former self. Take a look at Malaysia for example, where China was recently squeezed out. China has also lost other long time allies such as Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, both of whom had been Chinese allies since their liberation. But it's not just losing allies, because you can be sure that any ally China loses automatically becomes a US ally. Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar all fit that profile. In Taiwan, Beijing is also being squeezed out. Taiwan president Cai Yingwen recently said, we must join hands with the international community against China. It should also come as no surprise that Cai is also a huge supporter of the west. In the past 35 years, China has made next to no gains in acquiring allies, losing more allies than gain. As far as most know, China, in the past 35yrs has gained the Philipines as an ally, but lost Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, South Sudan, Albania, and Romania. On the other hand, the US has swallowed half of the USSR; Vietnam; Myanmar, Malaysia, Sri Lanka; and South Sudan, in addition to the rejime changes in Libya, Afganistan, Iraq, South Sudan, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Yemen, El Salvador.
What good is development if you can't influence the world? China has not been able to push its agenda internationally. We all know that China would like for the world to recognize Taiwan, and Hong Kong as being part of China, but the majority of the world still sees Taiwan as a country. Even businesses in countries perceived to have been a Chinese ally such as Malaysia list Taiwan as being a separate country from China. Most people in the international community even perceive Hong Kong as being a separate country despite official recognition of HK as China.