One of the most consequential events of the twentieth century was China’s historic turn, in the years after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, toward a sweeping program of reform. By relaxing the state’s grip on the economy and its control over society in this period, Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader from 1978 to 1989, helped put in motion the forces that would in mere decades pull hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty, transform China into the workshop of the world, and set it