Mao Zedong was right all along. Deng Xiaoping was a “capitalist roader”. Thirty years ago this week, at the catchily named third plenum of the 11th party congress central committee, Deng wrested power from the old guard loyal to Mao and launched China on the path of market reform.

Of course, history is never so clear-cut. Struggle and counter-struggle had been raging within the Communist party since Mao had died two years earlier. Deng, forced to work at a tractor factory during the Cultural Revolution because of his “rightist” tendencies, had long believed rigid communist ideology and overweening state interference were leading the economy down a dead end.