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“We welcome foreign investment and advanced techniques. Management is also a technique. Will they undermine our socialism? Not likely, because the socialist sector is the mainstay of our economy. Our socialist economic base is so huge that it can absorb tens and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign funds without being shaken. Foreign investment will doubtless serve as a major supplement in the building of socialism in our country. And as things stand now, that supplement is indispensable. Naturally, some problems will arise in the wake of foreign investment. But its negative impact will be far less significant than the positive use we can make of it to accelerate our development. It may entail a slight risk, but not much.” — Deng Xiaoping

I’m sure you know better though.



Thank you for the nice quote. You seem to think it contradicts what I said, but I don't see it that way. The importance of foreign investment was exactly my point.

Maybe because I said that he "abondoned organizing the whole sphere of the economy"? But the economy is no longer 100% state-owned like it was in 1978, is it not? (I'm having trouble finding reliable figures, but I vaguely recall it being around 40% of GDP nowadays.) Of course GDP has grown 40x since then, so even just 40% of that represents 16x growth and Deng wasn't wrong about the socialist sector benefiting from foreign investment. It's just that the private sector grew even more.


That doesn't mean the sphere of the economy isn't being organized, though. Deng's reforms were just a new stage of that development.




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