This paper constructs and analyses a long-run time-series for regional inequality in
China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of
inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late 1950s, the
Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, and finally the period of openness and
global integration in the late 1990s. Econometric analysis establishes that regional
inequality is explained in the different phases by three key policy variables; the ratio of
heavy industry to gross output value, the degree of decentralization, and the degree of
openness.