Deng Compared to Gorbachev
Why Deng Xiaoping's reforms produced four decades of growth while Mikhail Gorbachev's produced the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Two Reformers, Two Outcomes
In the late 1980s, the two largest communist states in the world were both attempting to reform. Deng Xiaoping had been opening China's economy since 1978. Mikhail Gorbachev launched his twin reform programs — perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political openness) — after becoming Soviet General Secretary in 1985. The results could not have been more different.
China's reforms produced sustained economic growth averaging nearly 10% per year for three decades, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, and kept the Communist Party firmly in power. The Soviet Union's reforms produced economic chaos, political fragmentation, and the complete dissolution of the state in 1991. The question of why has consumed scholars, policymakers, and Chinese leaders ever since.
For the Chinese Communist Party, the Soviet collapse is not an academic question but an existential lesson. Every senior CCP official has studied it. Internal party documentaries have been produced analyzing what went wrong. The conclusion drawn by the Party is that Gorbachev's fatal mistake was allowing political reform to outpace economic reform, a mistake that Deng's Four Cardinal Principles were designed to prevent.