Dengism

Dengism refers to the ideas and policies of Deng Xiaoping, the most powerful leader of China from the late 1970s until his death in 1997. The Chinese Communist Party calls it Deng Xiaoping Theory and describes it as the basis of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It moved China away from the mass campaigns and strict central planning of the Mao era. Its central idea was that economic development should be the main task of the party, and that market mechanisms, private enterprise and foreign investment could be used to achieve it. At the same time, Deng insisted that the Communist Party must keep its monopoly on political power.

Deng had been purged twice during the Cultural Revolution. After Mao Zedong's death in 1976 and the arrest of the Gang of Four, he returned and by 1978 had become the dominant leader. The party adopted reform and opening up at a plenum in December 1978. The Four Modernizations, of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology, became official goals. Collective farming was replaced by a system that let households keep surplus production, and agricultural output rose sharply. Special economic zones, starting with Shenzhen in 1980, attracted foreign investment. In 1979 Deng set out the Four Cardinal Principles, including the leadership of the party. The government introduced the one-child policy. In June 1989 Deng backed the military suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests, in which hundreds or possibly thousands of people were killed. In 1992 his southern tour revived market reforms.

Deng's successors presented their own additions as continuations of his theory, including the Three Represents under Jiang Zemin, the Scientific Outlook on Development under Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping Thought. Vietnam's Doi Moi reforms, launched in 1986, and later reforms in Laos followed a broadly similar model of market reform under one-party rule. Within China, debates continue over the balance between state and private sectors.

Liberal and human rights critics point to the Tiananmen crackdown, the continued repression of dissent and the lack of free elections. Critics on the left, including some Maoists, argue that the reforms restored capitalism, created large inequality and weakened workers' protections. Demographers and human rights groups criticize the coercive enforcement of the one-child policy, including forced abortions and sterilizations. Others point to corruption and environmental damage that accompanied rapid growth.

The reforms launched under Deng were followed by decades of very fast economic growth, and hundreds of millions of people in China rose above the poverty line, according to the World Bank. China became a leading trading nation and joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The political system remained a one-party state, and the Communist Party continues to describe its ideology as socialism with Chinese characteristics.