Selective and Showcase Liberalization

Abstract

After Deng’s strategies of managing elite conflict and grooming pro-reform young leaders are reviewed, it is time to zero in on his efforts to put into action liberal measures in opening up the nation. Among major reform initiatives introduced by post-Mao leaders, few have caught as much attention as the opening of China. Thus in examining national reform policies, the Open Policy is chosen as the case study. Whether or not to open up China’s economy to the outside world was a highly controversial and sensitive issue concerning national pride among the elites and the populace. The forced opening of China after its defeat in the Opium War in the mid-nineteenth century, called the Open Door Policy, is different from the Open Policy engineered by Deng Xiaoping. The Open Door Policy has been viewed by the Chinese as a national disgrace as well as an imperialist imposition of trade preferences on a sovereign country. Communists came to power in 1949 with a strong anti-imperialist tone that deeply influenced the Chinese for the coming decades. For fervent nationalists, the nation’s opening in any form resembled a sell-out of national economic interests to foreign intruders and abandoning of decades-old hard-line policy against the West.