In politics, fringe ideas can become mainstream and vice versa. The “window of political possibility” can expand or move, as Joe Overton, an American political analyst, once put it. The same is true even in communist China. In 1978, for example, the country’s Overton window made a momentous shift. Two years after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, it became possible for the party to acknowledge that the great helmsman was not infallible. This pragmatism paved the way for faster economic reform and for Deng Xiaoping to become China’s paramount leader. The change was sealed at a landmark meeting of the party’s central committee: the “third plenum” of December 1978.
The Economist
