Answer:
Deng Xiaoping was one of the old revolutionary fighters and a survivor of the legendary Long March. Having long been among the top leaders and an ally of Zhou Enlai, he still had a lot of respect in the Party. In 1977 he returned to the upper ranks of the Party, and by late 1978, as Hua Guofeng was fading politically, Deng became the Party's "paramount leader" while holding the relatively modest post of Vice Premier.
Deng tended toward pragmatism, and perhaps it was part pragmatism that led him to portray himself as a Marxist-Leninist. Marxist-Leninists, by the way, were supposed to be practical, and Deng was guided by what worked. Deng said he did not care whether a cat was black or white, that what mattered was whether the cat caught mice.
Deng remained opposed to Maoist egalitarianism. By now rigorous entrance examinations for universities were in place. Gifted children were to be identified and given advanced training. Deng favored opening China to what was to be called the global economy. In late December 1978, China ordered three 747s from Boeing aircraft in Seattle. Also that December, Coca-Cola announced that it would be opening a plant in Shanghai. And in early 1979 China's government shifted its economic strategy to emphasize the manufacture of consumer goods for sale abroad.
In 1979, China began to reassemble the rudiments of a legal system, Party leaders seeing insufficient legality as one of the causes of abuses during the Cultural Revolution. The Ministry of Justice was re-established. State courts were reopened, as were law schools. Party leaders hoped that more lawyers would help give people protections that had been lacking during the Cultural Revolution, and China invited a well known lawyer from the US, Alan Dershowitz, to lecture on the subject. Those in the legal profession who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution were rehabilitated. Deng and his comrades began a five-year program of research on the rehabilitation of others who had been condemned as criminals during the Maoist years, some posthumously, including Liu Shaoqi.
Explanation:
