Legends 2014 中国强人 HDTV S01E01.mkv

Opening up[edit]


Deng Xiaoping (left) and his wife Zhuo Lin (right) are briefed by Johnson Space Center director Christopher C. Kraft (extreme right)
In November 1978, after the country had stabilized following political turmoil, Deng visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and met with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who advised him to open up and institute reforms, as well as to stop exporting Communist ideologies in Southeast Asia.[27] Later, Deng sent tens of thousands of Chinese to Singapore to study.

Thanks to the support of other party leaders who had already recovered their official positions, in 1978 the rise to power of Deng was inevitable. Even though Hua Guofeng formally monopolized the top positions in the People's Republic, his position, with little support, was becoming increasingly difficult. In December 1978, during the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee Congress of the Communist Party of China, Deng took over the reins of power.

Beginning in 1979, the economic reforms accelerated the market model, while the leaders maintained old Communist-style rhetoric. The commune system was gradually dismantled and the peasants began to have more freedom to manage the land they cultivated and sell their products on the market. At the same time, China's economy opened to foreign trade. On 1 January of that year, the United States recognized the People's Republic of China, leaving the Republic of China's Nationalist government to one side, and business contacts between China and the West began to grow. In late 1978, the aerospace company Boeing announced the sale of 747 aircraft to various airlines in the PRC, and the beverage company Coca-Cola made public their intention to open a production plant in Shanghai.



Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter at the arrival ceremony.
In early 1979, Deng undertook an official visit to the United States, meeting President Jimmy Carter in Washington as well as several Congressmen. The Chinese insisted that ex-President Richard Nixon be invited to the formal White House reception, a symbolic indication of their assertiveness on the one hand, and their desire to continue with the Nixon initiatives on the other. During the visit, Deng visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as the headquarters of Coca-Cola and Boeing in Atlanta and Seattle, respectively. With these visits so significant, Deng made it clear that the new Chinese regime's priorities were economic and technological development.

Sino-Japanese relations also improved significantly.[28] Deng used Japan as an example of a rapidly progressing power that set a good example for China economically.

True to his famous 1961 pronouncement "it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, if it catches mice it is a good cat", which had caused so much criticism, Deng, along with his closest collaborators, such as Zhao Ziyang, who in 1980 relieved Hua Guofeng as premier, and Hu Yaobang, who in 1981 did the same with the post of party chairman, took the reins of power and the purpose of advancing the "four modernizations" (economy, agriculture, scientific and technological development and national defense), and announced an ambitious plan of opening and liberalizing the economy. The last position of power retained by Hua Guofeng, chairman of the Central Military Commission, was taken by Deng in 1981.