Effectively, Deng sought to modernize China by introducing certain elements of capitalism.
Explanation:
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution led by Mao Zedong, the leader Deng Xiaoping had taken a back seat. However, with the death of Mao, the man they had accused of being bourgeois recovered his protagonism to guide successfully the economic and political change of his country. Deng led his nation down the path of pragmatism, away from excessive ideological struggle.
Unlike the tradition of the western revolutions that shot the defeated factions, Deng Xiaoping promoted the transformations gradually, applying the Chinese adage of "crossing the river by feeling the stones step by step".
The policy of the Great Leap Forward promoted by Mao had such flaws that the Chinese society experienced severe difficulties and did not hesitate to accept the proposal of economic liberalization. For this reason the first reform adopted by Deng occurred in agriculture. The farms were allowed to deliver part of their production to the State, without this impeding the sale of surpluses in the market and the producers remaining with said income.
This change allowed agricultural production to double and advance towards the economic transformation from the countryside to industry by the 1980s. But the reformers were aware that, even with the shift towards an industrial economy, a link was required with international trade that opened its borders to foreign investment and incorporated advanced technologies into production processes.
This open-door policy led to the creation of Special Economic Zones, strategically located on the nation's coasts, where facilities for investment and foreign technology are still offered. Thanks to this way, manufacturing exports grew 85 percent, the total coefficient of exported products went from 6 percent to 21 percent in 17 years, and China became the maximum recipient of foreign direct investment, achieving economic growth that oscillated between 10.2 percent and 12.8 percent, between 1980 and 1995.
In order to advance the process of national unification and recover the territories lost in the 'Century of Humiliations', Deng formulated his policy of 'A country with two systems', with which China demanded to Portugal the return of Macao , and claimed to England the sovereignty over Hong Kong, which had been occupied since the Opium Wars.
All these reforms, in addition to the double-track policy, produced surprising results: 740 million people left absolute poverty, there was a field-city transfer of 270 million people and large companies were founded that became multinationals with capacity to acquire companies in the United States and Europe.
