By contrast, in putting economic reform first (and last), the Chinese leadership focused on reducing the burdens of the state, breaking without any compunction the moral-political promises of the People’s Republic to its labouring classes and to society as a whole. Well before the inflation of 1988, at a time when Deng was cooperating amicably with Zhao, the central government was already drafting bankruptcy legislation, and schemes to marketize labour and housing, without worrying about popular opinion.