没有邓小平的努力，中国能不能发展地和现在一样快？

No, it would have not been possible.

Mao completely broke the old society with his political movements and finally, the Cultural Revolution. There was a very high human cost and suffering caused by these changes, but they needed to be made for what followed.

After the death of Mao, Deng Xiaoping realized that nothing would be achieved by denouncing Mao (unlike what Khruschev did with his secret speech denouncing Stalin in 1956), and that China must focus on economic growth so that the Chinese could rise from poverty. In 1989, he realized that the western countries, led by the US, wanted to turn China into a western-style multi-party democracy which would follow western interests because it was socially and politically divided. He understood that if China followed this path, China would be economically strong but politically weak, and this was what the west and then-premier Zhao Ziyang wanted. For this reason, he chose to move strongly against the students, and prevent China from following this path as a puppet of the west.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party allowed greater economic freedom while strictly controlling the main political valves. This created another problem: because of the concentration of party power among party officials, and frequent collusion between business people, money interests and party officials, corruption became more common, and even pervasive. This hurt the reputation of the Chinese Communist Party among the Chinese people.

Xi Jinping realized that as China became wealthy, corruption would eventually erode the power of the Chinese Communist Party, and if allowed to continue unchecked, would result in the overthrow of the party. Since this had happened in the past in China’s history, when Chinese dynasties became corrupt and removed from the people, he needed to act.

This was the background to Xi’s anti-corruption policy, and policy of strengthening clean government. Only if the Chinese people believe that the party is clean, fair and transparent would they continue to accept government and party rule.

China’s history has shown that when the Chinese feel that the government is corrupt and removed from the people, they will rise up, overthrow it, and replace it with a new government.

Deng Xiaoping was a real hero, and set China and the Chinese Communist Party on the current path to success. He prevented China from following the path which Russia has followed after the breakup of the Soviet Union, or becoming a puppet of the west.

Because of him, China can stand up as an example to the rest of the world, and show that there are other paths of development besides the corrupt law-of-the- jungle version of capitalism offered by the US.