As young revolutionaries, the elders had overseen the execution of landlords, the seizure of factories, and the creation of people’s communes. But now they preserved their power by turning the revolution upside down: permitting private enterprise and opening a window to the outside world even if it allowed, as Deng put it, “a few flies” to get in. China’s reforms had no blueprint. The strategy, as Chen Yun put it, was to move without losing control—to “cross the river by feeling for the stones.” (Deng, inevitably, received credit for the expression.)
