China’s trade grew 30-fold between 1984 and 2005. Trade as a share of GDP reached 65 percent, an astoundingly high ratio for a large economy.11 The influx of foreign technology, capital, and know-how turned China into the workshop of the world and lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens out of abject poverty. What sustained this reformist moment, in turn, was the CCP’s willingness to embrace a slightly milder form of tyranny.
