Chinese Communist Revolution (1949)

The Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949 ended a century of foreign domination and civil war, and established the People's Republic—now the world's second-largest economy. Its post-1978 economic reforms lifted 800 million people out of poverty, the largest such reduction in history, surpassing even the industrial transformation of the American Gilded Age (#3 in scope). However, the catastrophic Great Leap Forward (1959-1961) caused an estimated 45 million deaths, a human cost far greater than any other revolution on this list. The revolution's legacy is deeply contradictory: it remains the most powerful modern example of rapid national development alongside extreme state-led suffering.