China’s reform and opening up: The 40th anniversary

FORTY years ago this month, the Communist Party of China, led by Deng Xiaoping, issued a clarion call for reform. Deng, who had emerged as the country’s strongman two years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, warned the party faithful in an iconoclastic speech not to believe blindly but to “emancipate the mind” and “seek truth from facts.”

“Of course, Comrade Mao was not infallible or free from shortcomings,” Deng declared days before the opening of the pivotal third plenum of the party’s 11th Central Committee on Dec. 18, 1978. “To demand that of any revolutionary leader would be inconsistent with Marxism.”

Mao himself dominated the People’s Republic of China from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976 and launched many political campaigns that resulted in millions of deaths while paying little attention to economic development.

China was one of the poorest countries in the world when Mao died. Today, 40 years after the party decided on the policy of reform and opening up, the country is the world’s second largest economy, and already number one according to some measures.

The party’s decision to shift the emphasis of its work to “socialist modernization” in 1979 was made during the third plenum, which closed on Dec. 22, 1978. The aim was to transform China into a “great, modern socialist power.”

The party is preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this pivotal event in style, and its leader, Xi Jinping, is likely to deliver a major speech to mark the occasion, during which he will pledge to continue to press forward with reform and opening up.

But is Xi Jinping really going to persevere on the path of reform and opening up that Deng inaugurated? Or is he instead moving in a different direction, while still holding up the old signboard?

It is clear that, in quite a few areas, Xi has been dismantling Deng’s reforms, not implementing them. Deng, who was repeatedly purged by Mao, saw the calamity that can be unleashed by untrammeled power. As a result, he put a great deal of emphasis on the creation of institutions and procedures to curb the emergence of another dictator like Mao.

Deng instituted such things