ABSTRACT
Deng Xiaoping sought to move the country away from any specific ideology and concentrate instead on modernizing the country. His aspirations sprung from the realization that without rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and implementing deep-rooted reforms, the PRC (and the Chinese Communist Party) could very well collapse. As the government control over the people’s lives loosened, many hoped that the liberalization of the political sphere would also begin. In late 1978, posters began to advocate more democratic reforms and were posted on a wall in the Xidan district of the central Beijing near the Forbidden City. In the Cultural Revolution, they demonstrated for the first time their power, in the front of which all reactionary forces trembled. But at that time the people had not yet clearly identified a direction, and the power of democracy had not become the core of the fight.
