After 1989, Deng chose to align with Li Peng and other hard-liners to solidify Party control. Never again, the leaders vowed, would China’s students build Statues of Liberty, quote from the Declaration of Independence, and look to America’s values as admirable alternatives to those of the Chinese Communist Party. Within a year, textbooks had been rewritten to cast America as China’s archvillain, and new policies and regulations ensured that only this official view of America made it into China’s classrooms and libraries.
