when and how did china become a manufacturing colossus ?

[any further]

[Auroch]

...since the republicans packed up our factories and sold them to the Chinese.

[umar]

China is an economic miracle of the 20th century. Hero in the comity of nations. In the aftermath of the collapse of Soviet Union and its socialist block like Yugoslavia, Romania and Check republic, China was the only communist country which did not buckle to the economic disaster of the Communist World. After the Tienanmen square protest and killings of 1989, Chinese immediately took to economic reforms on war footing and some real credit goes to the person of Deng Xio Peng who helped open up the closed economy of China to free market concept.

Lot of foreign direct investment FDI poured into the chinese mainland and coupled with cheap labour and almost negligible power cost, phenomenally reduced the over all industrial production cost. No nation in the world could compete with the prices of China products. Besides, Chinese society has also opened up to liberal social reforms and freedom of speech from an entirely closed setup.