The Communist party of China is the architect of modern Chinese society. Its record is one of enormous revolutionary accomplishment. From a small ragged band of marginal outlawed intellectuals in 1921, the party has become the largest political organization in world history and now decides the destinies of one-fifth of humankind. By successfully mobilizing the Chinese people to resist the Japanese during World War II the party rose to power. Then, organizing the poor and landless peasant masses of China, it decisively defeated the Guomindang in civil war. After Liberation, the party established China's full independence from foreign imperialism, broke the power of the landlords and capitalists – the old ruling elites – and, over the past three-and-one-half decades, has revolutionized the structure of the largest society on earth. Mistakes have been made – and they have cost dearly – but the party has succeeded in providing order, food, clothing, shelter, education, pride, and hope for a society that lacked even these bare human essentials prior to Liberation, in 1949. In the thirty-five years following Liberation, the party directed the industrialization and economic development of China. World Bank figures show that China's growth rates were among the highest in the world between 1950 and 1975 (see Rawski 1980, table 30). Unfortunately population increase has absorbed most of China's economic growth, stifling the country's development and preventing the people from prospering as much as they otherwise would have done.