Deng's truth-from-facts willingness to discard outmoded dogmas
and his black-cats/white-cats readiness to tinker with China's basic
economic institutions had led him boldly to venture where no
Chinese leader - no leader anywhere in the communist world - had
previously dared to go. Early on, Deng decoupled the engine of
market competition (good) from the stigma of capitalist exploitation
(bad) and threw open China's doors to the outside world, setting in
motion a process of accelerated socio-economic development and
modernization. . . . Rapid but uneven economic growth, accompanied
by a deep erosion of traditional ideological norms and social
controls, produced a situation high in raw entrepreneurial energy
but low in institutionalized immunity to a wide variety of potential
systemic disorders, ranging from rising regional inequality and
uncontrolled rural emigration to a nationwide epidemic of crime,
corruption, and popular cynicism. All this arguably rendered China
more volatile politically than at any time since the late 1940s.'
