Opening to the Outside World } 359
of thousands of brightly displayed goods. Even with a single product—toilet
paper or toothpaste, perhaps—there would be scores of choices to match
each individual preference. Our Chinese visitors were often shocked by this
abundance.
During visits to New York in 1974 and to Paris in 1975, Deng Xiaoping
had opportunities to see how far behind the advanced capitalist countries
China had fallen. Deng’s stay in New York City in April 1974 to propound
Mao’s Three Worlds theory was only for several days, but even a brief stay in
that invigorating city offered a glimpse of at least the physical structure of a
Western urban metropolis, so different from the low-rise, dour, low-tech cit-
ies of socialist countries. On a free day during his 1974 New York visit, Deng
asked to be taken to Wall Street. It was Sunday and offices were closed, but
Deng nonetheless saw the heart of US capitalism.^11 Deng returned to France
in May 1975 for a six-day visit organized to give him a much closer look at ad-
vanced capitalism. Deng had lived in France for five years, from 1920 to 1925,
so his return in 1975 gave him an opportunity to see the results of fifty years of
capitalist development. France in that time had been completely transformed.
Accompanied during his 1975 visit by a number of high-ranking cadres from
China’s industrial, transport, and scientific sectors, Deng and his entourage
were shown a number of French factories and agricultural facilities. Deng was
stuck by the high level of automation, mechanization, and efficiency of French
industries. Deng also discussed trade possibilities with his French hosts and
found considerable interest in this regard. Deng concluded his investigation
in France acutely aware of how far behind the West China had fallen, how
much it needed to race to catch up.^12 As Deng would tell a pivotal Central
Work Conference in December 1978 that would lead to his appointment as the
CCP’s paramount leader:
[T] he fundamental guiding principle of shifting the focus of all Party
work to the four modernizations ... has solved a host of important prob-
lems inherited from the past ... Let us advance courageously to change
the backward condition of our country and turn it into a modern and
powerful socialist country.^13
Once Deng returned to office in July 1977 after Mao’s death and the ar-
rest of Jiang Qing and her radical Maoist followers, he arranged for multiple
delegations of top-level Chinese leaders to travel to advanced counties for
investigation of conditions. Deng’s purpose was to “emancipate the minds”
of China’s leaders by making them aware of how backward and poor China
was and of the need to focus all party work on the Four Modernizations. In
1978, four high-level investigation groups traveled to Yugoslavia, Hong Kong,
Japan, and Western Europe.^14 The delegation to Yugoslavia renormalized ties
with that country and its ruling communist party and legitimized study of
the socialist economies of Eastern Europe. A number of models would be