34913 }
Opening to the Outside World
Making the PRC a Prosperous and Powerful Socialist Country
China’s foreign relations underwent a sweeping reorientation circa 1978 under
the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. During the long era of Mao’s rule, the CCP
had sought domestic and international revolution. Under Deng, it returned to
an older, pre-Mao focus that had inspired Chinese patriots since the late nine-
teenth century: making China rich and powerful. Deng laid out the strate-
gic objective in March 1975 when he was drafting the “Four Modernizations”
under Zhou Enlai’s tutelage, while Mao was still alive:
The whole Party must now give serious thought to our country’s
overall interest. What is that interest? ... a two-stage development of our
economy ... to turn China into a powerful socialist country with mod-
ern agriculture, industry, national defense and science [i.e., the Four
Modernizations] by the end of this century, that is, within the next
25 years. The entire Party and nation must strive for the attainment of
this objective. This constitutes the overall national interest.^1
One key to achieving this goal was opening to the outside world and
drawing broadly and deeply on the inputs of the advanced capitalist coun-
tries: technology, science, managerial skills, machinery and equipment, capi-
tal, and export markets. As Deng explained in 1978 after Mao had died and
shortly before the CCP Politburo selected Deng as paramount leader:
For a certain period of time, learning advanced science and technol-
ogy from the developed countries was criticized as ‘blindly worship-
ing foreign things.’ We have come to understand how stupid this
argument is. ... China cannot develop by closing its door, sticking to
the beaten track and being self-complacent. ... In the early 1960s, we
were behind the developed countries in science and technology, but
the gap was not too wide. However, over the past dozen years, the gap