Four decades ago, the Chinese Communist Party, under its new paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, decided to subordinate ideology to wealth creation, spawning a new aphorism, "To get rich is glorious." The party's central committee, disavowing Mao Zedong's thought as dogma, embraced a principle that became Deng's oft-quoted dictum, "Seek truth from facts."
Mao's death earlier in 1976 had triggered a vicious and protracted power struggle. When the diminutive Deng — once described by Mao as a "needle inside a ball of cotton" — finally emerged victorious at the age of 74, he hardly looked like an agent of reform.
But having been purged twice from the party during the Mao years — including once for proclaiming during the 1960s that "it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice" — Deng seized the opportunity to usher in transformative change.