350 { China’s Quest
has widened because the world has been developing with tremendous
speed. Compared with developed countries, China’s economy has fallen
behind at least ten years or perhaps 20, 30, or even 50 years in some
areas. .... To achieve the four modernizations, we must be adept at
learning from other countries and we must obtain a great deal of for-
eign assistance.^2
Deng Xiaoping had a deep appreciation for the decisive role of science and
technology in the process of modernization. Overseeing Soviet-Chinese tech-
nological exchanges as general secretary in the 1950s had allowed Deng to see
firsthand how much Chinese science and technology advanced via cooper-
ation with the Soviet Union during that decade.^3 Then, during his political
exile in Jiangxi during the Cultural Revolution, Deng saw just how backward
much of China remained. Workers had no access to even simple radios or
sanitary toilets. During his 1974 trip to New York to address the UN General
Assembly, with a stopover of several days in Paris added on, Deng got a
glimpse of what modern cities looked like in contrast to China’s or the Soviet
Union’s dour socialist cities. Once rehabilitated and made vice premier in
January 1975, Deng chose as one of his areas of primary responsibility science
and technology. Deng set up a Political Research Office staffed by a number of
China’s top Marxist-Leninist theoreticians to explain in acceptable theoret-
ical terms the importance of science and technology. This office also identi-
fied various writings by Mao that could be used (and were used after Mao’s
death and the arrest of the Gang of Four) to stress the importance of science
and technology in building socialism. A more fundamental shift can hardly
be imagined. From closing off China from capitalist influences for the sake of
ideological class struggle to build socialism and communism, China would
open itself widely to capitalist influences for the sake of economic modern-
ization. It is important to understand, however, that CCP leaders, especially
Deng Xiaoping, did not see this as abandonment of socialism or as the resto-
ration of capitalism—though many foreign observers mistakenly concluded
that they did.^4 For China’s communist leaders, it was a question of how to best
build socialism in China.
CCP leaders framed the issue in Marxist-Leninist terms. Finding an
ideologically satisfactory explanation of China’s new course, one congruent
with Marxist-Leninist ideology, was essential to achieving a broad consen-
sus behind the new course of opening and reform. After nearly two years of
intense and very genuine debate, the mainstream of CCP leaders (including
the coalition that selected Deng as paramount leader in late 1978) concluded
that Mao had made a fundamental error in 1956 when he concluded that
antagonistic classes continued to exist even after the private ownership of the
means of production had been eliminated via the socialist transformation
of commerce and industry.^5 In fact, antagonistic classes no longer existed.