Broke, isolated, and backward, China was not just ready for change but desperately in need of it by the time Mao died. The impetus for reform was certainly the dire living conditions of most Chinese. But also important, says Lampton, was the collective sense that China could and should be outperforming its neighbors - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, collectively known as the East Asian Tigers - who were then in the midst of their own spectacular economic growth spurts. "It was a sense of Chinese pride. The characters [spelling out China in the Chinese language] mean 'middle kingdom,' halfway between heaven and earth," says Lampton. "It's an exalted sense of China's role in the region and the world. But the reality was it was an extremely poor country."

China's power vacuum ultimately was filled by Deng Xiaoping, who had previously­ risen and then been purged during Mao's rule. Deng was a far different leader than Mao. Having been educated in France, he was more worldly and more open to foreign ideas than his predecessor, who had done little traveling. At the core of Deng's leadership style was devotion not to ideology but to pragmatism. Indeed, Deng was fond of an old Chinese saying, one that summed up his approach to economic reform: "It doesn't matter if the cat is white or black, as long as it catches the mouse."

"They field-tested their ideas. They would try something in one place and spread it if it worked and drop it if it didn't," says William Overholt, director of the Center for Asia Pacific Policy at the RAND Corporation, a think tank in Santa Monica, California. "They were pragmatic and went with what worked."