In many ways, the USSR and China were the same or similar during the Cold War period, as both had slowly growing economies, old and not very efficient industry, bad economic planning, and trying to be self-sustaining. The USSR fell apart, and the country tried to become democracy and to have a market economy. That actually put the country in an even worse situation, as the economy was going down instead of up, and the country faced bankruptcy. Only after Putin got to power he managed to slowly turn things around and to start moving the country in the right direction economically, though socially and politically the country is still strongly hold by the power of one. China on the other hand have numerous problems with its terrible economic policies, which resulted in a protest. The Communist Party though was not very happy about it and as always used violence to sort out the problem. China started to change though with Deng Xiaoping, often considered as one of the best economist the world had ever seen. He managed to reform the Chinese economy, abandon the self-sustaining system, open up the economy gradually to the world, invite foreign investments, while still keeping control of all the important Chinese resources. This led to an economic boom in China, and country had such a quickly growing economy that in only two decades it managed to became the second largest economy in the world, getting very close to the first one of the US. The country is still run by the Communist Party and the people ares till very restricted, but the life standard has improved significantly and the country has modernized and constantly moves in an upward trajectory.