We also noted, in contrast to the standard accounts of Chinese economic reforms, that these didn’t have their origins in some clever planning by Chinese leaders but in political struggles within the Politburo pitting Deng Xiaoping against the Gang of Four. It was once again politics — not clever planning, design or economic advice — driving economics. In fact, the recent thought-provoking book by Victor Nee and Sonja Opper, Capitalism from Below convincingly argues that early reforms were neither instituted by the party nor were they outcomes of experimentation, but resulted from the party catching up with what had been going on on the ground given the political vacuum and crisis wrought by the Cultural Revolution. They point out that before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, privately-led experiments with production for the market and ending collective incentives had started. For example, in Anhui province, peasant households had already dissolved communes and collectives before any reforms, and had started a land-lease system. They suggest it was this sort of development that forced the hand of Deng Xiaoping and Communist Party elites to start loosening of central planning and collectivization. Whether Nee and Opper’s interpretation is correct or not, what seems clear is that there was a radical change in economic institutions in China and most likely this resulted from a variety of political factors — rather than from Deng Xiaoping’s farsighted genius as the hagiographic biography of Deng, Deng Xiaoping, by Ezra Vogel suggests

Sassenach wrote:Well it doesn't seem to be a more conservative group than before, but at the same time it would be foolish to assume anything. Just because Xi Jinping speaks good English and has a daughter at Harvard it doesn't follow that he's going to be any more open to political reforms than his predecessors.