ABSTRACT
The year 1992 witnessed dramatic shift in the publicly stated policy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This shift followed a trip to South China early in the year by China's senior patriarch, Deng Xiaoping. Deng's renewed stress on faster and bolder economic reform will constitute the basis of the policy agenda for the 14th Party Congress scheduled for late 1992. The first public indications of a resurgent reform effort came with Yang Shangkun's speech to mark the 80th anniversary of the 1911 revolution. At the time, most of the foreign press concentrated on Yang's comments about Taiwan and reunification and overlooked the significance of his assertion that the core of all work was promotion of the economy. Deng announced a major change in the CCP's political line. Ever since the events of 1989, the Chinese public had been told that the greatest threat to socialism in China came from bour geois liberals, termed "rightists."
