With the 1949 Revolution, China avenged its centu­ry of humiliation. A new China was born—the line in the 1943 propaganda song, “there would be no New China without the Communist Party” was, we have to admit, quite prophetic. But the euphoria was short-lived because the New China was far from perfect. Disasters, one after another, resulting from Chairman Mao’s ambitions and mistaken understanding of ground realities, led to loss of millions of lives. Everything was in shambles. In 1974, Premier Zhou Enlai, while he was receiving treatment for cancer in a hospital room in Beijing, was also finalizing a plan to realize the dream of a modern, rich and powerful China with Li Xiannian, Ye Jianying, Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping. Although the deliberations to make China a modern socialist power by 2000 had been going on since the early 1960, Chairman Mao’s frequent mood swings made everyone fear their political and personal survival and the agenda took a backseat.

It was Hua Guofeng, Mao’s “chosen” successor, who made it possible for Deng to carry out future reforms

Finally, on January 13, 1975, Pre­mier Zhou presented his plan at the Fourth National People’s Con­gress. China needed foreign trade and technology to recover from a series of socialist misadventures, the latest being the ongoing Cul­tural Revolution (1966-1976). While delivering the speech stat­ing the need for modernization in four key areas—agriculture, economy, science and technolo­gy and national defense, or Four Modernizations— Zhou knew it well that he would not live to see its implementation and was not even sure that the plan would be implemented as it was the craziest of times and nobody had a clue where China was headed.

And there came a sign from the most unlikely source—heav­en (tian). The devastating 1976 Tangshan earthquake was seen by many as signaling a change, as major natural calamities preced­ed dynastic changes in Chinese history. Soon after, Chairman Mao went to see Marx, euphe­mism for death then. Zhou had already gone to meet Marx a few months before the Chairman had his chance.

The story of what happened after Mao’s death has been told and retold many times. The popular version credits Deng for everything good that hap­pened thereafter. Deng played a huge role in China’s growth, no doubt. But it was Hua Guofeng, Mao’s “chosen” successor, who made it possible for Deng to carry out future reforms. But Hua is confined to obscurity in many accounts.

As Ezra Vogel explains, it was Hua who abandoned radical Mao­ism, arrested the notorious ultra-left Gang of Four members includ­ing Mao’s actress-turned-revo­lutionary wife Jiang Qing, and established the Special Economic Zones to attract foreign invest­ment, and who reluctantly rein­stated Deng. Deng, however, proved to be a better politician than Hua. In a few years, Deng had him sidelined and replaced by his loyal, Hu Yaobang.

Shortly after his political come­back, Deng formally launched the Four Modernizations in 1978. The revolution was postponed for 100 years to signal to the foreigners that China was now prioritizing political stability and economic growth, and to assure the Chinese people that the era of nonsensical socialist adventure was now over.

Deng’s change of course

Deng was not dogmatic. As a young work-study student in France, he had seen the good side of capitalism (of course some scholars rule out this interpreta­tion, while others swear by it). The chaos resulting from Chair­man Mao’s misguided policies made him find a way to fuse good traits of capitalism with socialism.

He also had a personal reason for doing away with the ultra-left ideology, as Merle Goldman has argued.

A group of Red Guards had thrown out his son, Deng Pufang, a student of physics, from a third-floor window at Peking University. The guards were the youth who felt they were following Chairman Mao’s call to destroy the reaction­aries and rightists. (Some claim Deng Pufang tried to kill himself by jumping off ). Deng Pufang sur­vived but he wasn’t given urgent medical care, and he remains paralyzed as a result. Deng’s other children were sent to rural areas for reeducation and he himself was sent to a tractor factory and was paid so little that he had to cut down on his favorite indulgence, smoking.

While craving a morning smoke at the workers’ dormito­ry in Jiangsu’s tractor factory, Deng must have realized that he himself as well as millions of Chinese had had enough of the leftist misadventures. Not long after, when he got the Mandate of Heaven, the plan was already there and the time was right to change China.

And Revlon met the revolution­ary Iron Brigade Women who in the 1960s shunned all signs of feminism and declared make-up un-revolutionary and feudal. Colonel Sander’s crispy chicken was happily consumed by the comrades opposing US imperi­alism. The old comrades who had spent some time in France during their youth under the work-study program realized they had not fallen out of love with the taste of croissant after all. Everybody got what they wanted in Deng’s China, except people like Wei Jingsheng, who want­ed the “fifth modernization”, i.e., western-style democracy.

Heaven is never wrong.