But the same could have been said of the early utterances of Deng, modern China’s greatest reformer. As Ezra Vogel notes in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Deng’s first public statement after his political rehabilitation in 1976 was, “Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought constitute the guiding ideology of the party.”
西方观察者专注于习近平和李克强最近的公开讲话，强调他们缺少对经济和政治改革的支持。但邓小平——现代中国最伟大的改革家——在掌权之初亦是如此。正如傅高义（Ezra Vogel）在《邓小平时代》（Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China）所指出的，邓小平在1976年平反后的第一次发声是“马克思列宁主义和毛泽东思想是党的指导思想”。