During Mao's era, the CCP was a revolutionary party dominated by worker and peasants. In 1956, the two groups made up 83 percent of the membership. When Deng Xiaoping came to power, he initiated a technocratic movement that replaced workers and peasants with technocrats. Since then, the representation of workers and peasants has generally experienced a downward trend from 64 percent in 1981 to 48 percent in 1994 to 29 percent in 2005s.