As young Luke Skywalker first jumped into his landspeeder a long time ago, in a country far away Deng Xiaoping was still consolidating his power base, prior to launching the biggest market opening in history.
China’s gross domestic product per capita then was less than $200, below that of Afghanistan. Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic, had died just eight months earlier and cinemas ran such Cultural Revolution-themed classics as “Thank You, Comrades.”
Over the next decade and a half, while moviegoers outside the country watched the Empire strike back and the Jedi return, Deng built free-trade zones, stock markets and infrastructure that unleashed a flood of investment. His proving ground was Shenzhen, a former fishing village across the border from Hong Kong, where consumers queued up in 1990 for their first taste of a Big Mac at the opening of the mainland’s first McDonald’s Corp. restaurant.
When Deng walked into Shanghai’s state-owned No. 1 Department Store to go shopping in 1992, the shelves were full of consumer goods, instead of the bare-bones offerings available when his reforms began, according to Ezra Vogel’s biography, “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.” The paramount leader bought some pens for his grandchildren before hopping on a train back to Beijing.