We have seen that the primary force driving the changes after Mao’s death was a reaction against the Cultural Revolution. Yet this was never presented as a revolt against socialism. In both official discourse and popular understanding, the Cultural Revolution was treated as socialism gone wrong. Economically, the socialist revolution did not mean keeping people in poverty. Politically, it promised emancipation rather than the demagogic tyranny exercised by the ‘Gang of Four’. In a movement for the ‘liberation of thought’, calls for socialist democracy in the press both encouraged activists and benefited Deng in his struggles for power within the party. Since the international environment was no longer so hostile to China as in the fifties and sixties, while party cadres—not yet corrupted—were still capable of implementing directives, this should have been an ideal opportunity for the CCP to experiment with genuine socialism, with popular support and a whole generation of young people eager to participate in it.