{"id":30405,"date":"2008-12-29T04:31:42","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T11:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=30405"},"modified":"2008-12-29T04:31:42","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T11:31:42","slug":"bao-tong-why-china-had-to-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2008\/12\/bao-tong-why-china-had-to-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Bao Tong: Why China Had to Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/baotong-12272008095946.html\">RFA<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Reforms, along with the Third Plenum of the 11th Chinese Communist Party Congress Central Committee [in December 1978], seem to be a hot topic at the moment. I too have some thoughts and memories to write down, some comparisons and criticisms. I would welcome the opportunity to debate them with anyone wishing to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Where should I start? From the source of it all: namely, the reasons why there was no way forward but reform at this time.<\/p>\n<p>Someone famous once said, &#8220;Not introducing reforms will take us down a blind alley.&#8221; This famous person has long since died.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it wasn&#8217;t said by Chen Yun, who favored a planned economy, nor was it said by Zhao Ziyang or Hu Yaobang, both of whom favored a market economy and political reform. No, it was said by the biggest name of that era: Deng Xiaoping.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From RFA: Reforms, along with the Third Plenum of the 11th Chinese Communist Party Congress Central Committee [in December 1978], seem to be a hot topic at the moment. I too have some thoughts and memories to write down, some comparisons and criticisms. I would welcome the opportunity to debate them with anyone wishing to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[6535,5895,2334],"class_list":["post-30405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-30-years-of-reform","tag-bao-tong","tag-reform","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bao Tong: Why China Had to Reform<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2008\/12\/bao-tong-why-china-had-to-reform\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bao Tong: Why China Had to Reform\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From RFA: Reforms, along with the Third Plenum of the 11th Chinese Communist Party Congress Central Committee [in December 1978], seem to be a hot topic at the moment. I too have some thoughts and memories to write down, some comparisons and criticisms. 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