March 1997

Deng Xiaoping was eulogized by his colleagues as the “chief architect” of China’s reform program and its opening to the outside world.¹ This was misleading. Deng was no master builder. Unlike his patron, Mao Zedong, and fortunately for his countrymen, he had no utopian blueprints for the future, except perhaps the century-old dream of Chinese statesmen that China must become rich and powerful. But, like Mao, he was a demolition man.