New York Times series on 40 years of “Reform and Opening Up”

In December it will be forty years since Deng Xiaoping steered the PRC and its economy in a new direction, towards more cooperation with foreign firms and governments, and a market-capitalist element to its economic planning. Since then, China has changed dramatically at many different levels. Although I take exception to the description of China as “[A]n isolated, impoverished backwater” (in 1978), this article and the rest of the series provide some useful insights and refreshers of the historical events leading to the China we know today: “The Land that Failed to Fail.”