China Under Deng Xiaoping Political and Economic Reform

Deng Xiaoping and his team understand the tragic, high sacrifice modern China has gone through due to past government stages that have either simply failed or have misguided the nation through poverty, domination and violent revolution. Intra-party factional struggles may continue, but the reformers will succeed in the end and sweep away the ideologues. The liberalization of rural China has awakened the countryside into economic self-determination: its trend toward economic privatization and free markets which can no longer be reversed, the need for government's guide for growth in urban reform and economic competition, and educational and cultural advancement. Liberalization will drive the demand for political democratization, intellectual freedom, cultural diversity and regional particularism. In Deng's "socialist democracy", "socialism with Chinese characteristics", and superficial adherence to Mao Zedong Thought, it meets Zhoe Ziyang's theoretical declaration of "primary stage socialism" which is a start to meet the ideological void.