To facilitate successful implementation of his reform, Deng decided,
first of all, to bring about the nation’s recovery from the decade of
stagnation and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. He established
the key policy of economic development and opening to the outside
world at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh CCP Central Committee in
- Different from Mao’s people’s commune system, Deng’s policy
allowed farmers to manage their own piece of land and to directly
benefit from their own labor according to a system of distributed
responsibility, thus greatly arousing the enthusiasm of rural China.
Scientific management methods were adopted to improve the effi-
ciency of state-owned enterprises and to allow the emergence of
priva te enter prises. Luo ( 2005 ) believe s that Deng’s challenge to what
had been mistakenly perceived as genuine Maoist thoughts opened up
people’s minds, instilled confidence, and facilitated a broad-based
economic recovery.
In addition to bringing about the recovery of China’s domestic
economy, Deng set a new vision by addressing China’s relationship
with the outside world differently from Mao’s epoch. During the
Cultural Revolution and for many years before that, China largely
isolated itself from the Western world. Yet to build China’s economy,
Deng decided that China could not afford to ignore developments in
science and management that were happening in the Western world.
In many of his speeches, Deng emphasized the importance and the
benefits of opening to and learning from the outside world. In his
speech, ‘‘Use the intellectual resources of other countries and open
wider to the outside world’’ (Deng, 1994 ), for instance, he addressed
China’s earnest need to attract foreign experts and resources to
develop its own major projects, and the need to be flexible to facilitate
the import of foreign resources. Deng perceived that opening to the
outside world to exploit international opportunities for a strong China
was ‘‘a matter of strategic importance’’ (Deng, 1994 : 43).
Third, Deng’s reforms aimed to improve the efficiency of the
government and administration. For a long time in the history of
the CCP, party leaders had enjoyed lifelong tenure, with promotion
largely determined by seniority. These traditional practices had led to
invetera te inertia an d lethargy in the governm ent (Lu o, 2005 ). As
early as in his speech of 1961, ‘‘Promote large numbers of young
technicians’’ (Deng, 1992 : 267–268), Deng emphasized the import-
ance of ‘‘professional and technical competence’’ as the main criterion
Leadership theories and practices of Mao and Deng 223