SEPTEMBER 1976 Mao Zedong Dies Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), the Marxist revolutionary who led the communists to victory in a lengthy civil war against Jiang Jieshi’s (Chiang Kai-shek’s) nationalists, was the recognized leader of the People’s Republic of China from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976. Mao advocated world revolution and initially sought to ally China with Stalin’s Soviet Union, isolating China from the West and sending forces to assist communists in the Korean and Indo-Chinese wars. By the end of the 1950s, however, he had split with Khrushchev’s regime and embarked on a campaign to industrialize China that proved extraordinarily harsh and led to unprecedented starvation. After 1967 he returned to the theme of world revolution but played a balancing game, using the army to purge the party, then turning on the army and playing the “America card” to neutralize the Soviet threat and force the army back into a supporting role. Though Mao is still highly esteemed in China, his efforts to close the country to international commerce and to eradicate traditional culture were quickly abandoned by his successors. His death became a turning point in modern Chinese history. SEE FIGURE 47 MAY 1977 Donald Bren and Consortium Purchase the Irvine Company Orange County’s spatial organization differs markedly from that of older metropolitan regions. It represents a new kind of decentralized and multi-centered area comprising many independent and highly specialized centers that no city dominates. In the 1950s much of the development of this de-concentrated area resulted from the activities and policies of the Irvine Company, owner of Southern California’s largest piece of undeveloped land. Responding to population increases and rising land values, the Irvine Company allocated portions of the ranch for residential and commercial projects and engaged in intense planning regarding the nature of these projects. The process was accelerated in the 1970s when a change in tax law led to the sale of the company to a group of investors who had borrowed heavily to raise the necessary money. In a second such sale, in 1977, a financial consortium that included Joan Irvine Smith (James Irvine II’s granddaughter), Alfred Taubman, and Donald L. Bren outbid the Mobil Corporation, purchasing the company for $337 million dollars.
SEPTEMBER 1978 President Carter Sponsors the Camp David Accords
When President Jimmy Carter came to office he intended to replace the incremental Middle East peace talks that characterized Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy with a multilateral regional approach. However, neither Jordan nor Syria would participate in an international conference, and both Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin favored bilateral talks. In fact, Sadat short-circuited Carter’s plans by announcing in November 1977 that he would go to Jerusalem and address the Knesset, the first Arab leader to visit Israel. Subsequently, two framework agreements were negotiated at Camp David and signed by Sadat and Begin at the White House in September 1978. The first of these, which was concerned with the Palestinian territories, remained largely unutilized. The second, which dealt with Egyptian-Israeli relations, led to Israel’s evacuation of the Sinai and the peace treaty of 1979 between the two countries. Sadat’s eagerness to regain the Sinai and to enlist the West in assisting the Egyptian economy was compatible with Begin’s desire to retain the West Bank and detach the most powerful Arab state from the anti-Israeli alliance. SEE FIGURE 63 JUNE 1978 Tax Revolt and Proposition 13 in California By 1970 more Americans lived in suburban regions than urban centers. This fact transformed the nation’s political agenda in many significant ways, especially in suburban California, where inflated real estate prices and a surge in California’s population, with accompanying education and welfare costs, helped to fuel anti-tax sentiments. A taxpayer’s revolt in California put three fiscal-limitation measures on the state ballot between 1978 and 1980. The first and most significant of these was the Jarvis-Gann initiative (Proposition 13), a response to a series of California Supreme Court rulings requiring more equitable funding of schools across the state. Proposition 13 limited local real estate taxes to one percent of market value and no more than two percent on resale. Endorsed in 1978 by almost two-thirds of California voters, “Prop 13” provided savings to homeowners and businesses but ultimately resulted in severe cuts to public education, police and fire protection, public health, libraries, and other government services. SEE FIGURE 64
Figure 63. (Top) President Anwar Sadat, President Jimmy Carter and Prime Minister Menachem Begin (left to right) negotiated a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt. Image courtesy of Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. Figure 64. Howard Jarvis celebrates after the approval of Proposition 13 freezing real estate taxes for California’s corporate and individual landowners. Image courtesy of Los Angeles Library.
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