BANGKOK -- The man who guided China toward becoming the world's second-largest economy was not the country's former top leader, Deng Xiaoping, but rather Singapore's first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew. Or at least this is one way future historians might describe China's rise.
In the mid-1970s, the final years of China's Cultural Revolution, the country's development was grinding to a standstill. Under the Communist Party dictatorship, some members were oppressed on the pretext that they were counterrevolutionaries, throwing politics into turmoil. The inefficiencies of a planned economy resulted in widespread poverty. Recognizing these dire straits, Deng lit the torch of reform.
