| Summary/Abstract |
The seeming departure of president Xi Jinping from Deng Xiaoping’s “pragmatic” moderation owes much to a highly tendentious misrepresentation of Deng’s core objectives. For 35 years, Dengism has been viewed through a globalist lens that flatly contrasts it with Maoist authoritarianism. From a post globalist vantage however, it appears that Deng’s reforms reconfigured rather than ended statist oppression. dengism was born out of the recognition that capitalism and authoritarianism were fully compatible and together were crucial for the survival of the CCP. “Opening China” China was Deng’s ironic mechanism for safeguarding against claims, which mandate a liberal corrective that Xi fears more than any other international contest. What he and other CCP elites dread most is a liberal post-globalisation that could foment a grassroots “China Spring”.
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