Deng Xiaoping Theory - Synopsis

Synopsis

One of the most famous maxims of Deng, dating back to the years before the Cultural Revolution, states that "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice." In other words, he did not worry too much about whether a policy was capitalist or socialist as long as it improved the economy. (This statement came to stand in opposition to the ideas of class struggle projected into economic relations, the latter being epitomized in a phrase "a socialist train coming with a delay is better than the capitalist one that comes on time").

China's phenomenal economic growth largely owes its success to this pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping's theory. The task faced by Deng was twofold: to promote modernization while preserving the ideological unity of CPC and its control of the difficult process of reforms.

The first was generalized by the concept of the Four Modernizations; the second was needed as protection from the popular unrest, threatening to undermine the reform process (see Democracy Wall of 1978, Tiananmen Incident of 1989).

This became the main motivation for ideological conservatism of Deng Xiaoping Theory: "Four Cardinal Principles" which the Communist Party must uphold, namely,

• Upholding the basic spirit of Communism
• Upholding the People's democratic dictatorship political system
• Upholding the leadership of the Communist Party
• Upholding Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought

In 1992, fourteen years after Deng had risen up as China's de facto leader, he embarked on the "nan xun" or "Inspection visit to the South". There he, being already very old, uttered the famous words: "kai fang 开放!". These words, which literally mean "open up", would indeed prove to be very significant for China's economic and social development up until the current day. After this surge of motivation, China both economically and socially started expanding.