Edit: I’m tired and misread the question to be about Gorbachev vs Deng.
There are several major things that stand out: Deng’s reforms were a tradeoff of accepting the bad of austerity and markets in exchange for real material concessions and access to resources and industrial capital, whereas Gorbachev just kind of shattered the central planning apparatus and began liquidating state assets, and retreated geopolitically as well, in exchange for literally nothing except more agitation and hostility from the US. Deng’s bloc also did not castigate and slander past leaders of the CPC the way Gorbachev’s liberals did to the past leaders of the CPSU, nor did they systematically dismantle the CPC and isolate regional branches from one another the way the CPSU was undermined. The CPC under Deng did not simply roll over and passively accept insurgencies like the CPSU did at the end, and instead both cracked down on violent agitators and sought to continue making some concessions to the broader public sentiment. China’s liberalizing reforms were also careful and piecemeal, getting something out of every step and preventing it from entirely upending the existing logistics system and industrial base, whereas like I mentioned in the beginning Gorbachev just kind of gutted the central planning system, destroyed the Soviet logistics system, and basically just did the liberal prayer of “the market will make it better, praise the holy line which can only ever go up!” and it did not work because of course it doesn’t work.
Some of that is that Deng’s bloc were cynical and decided to retreat from ideological goals for material strategic gains, and some of it is that the US at that point was happy to try to split off China and desperately needed China as a market both to buy skilled labor from and sell new industrial capital in a volume that American factories didn’t want to buy which made those strategic gains possible for China. Some of it is that Gorbachev was a dipshit who was apparently quite competent and well liked in a support role, but who had no good ideas of his own and on inheriting a mandate of reform and modernization found himself leaning on anticommunist extremists and elevating them into positions of power where they could censor communists and run anticommunist propaganda and just generally sabotage everything, and some of it is that the USSR was never going to get the sort of material concessions that China did because Reagan was even more of a fanatic extremist than Nixon and where China had material things to offer the US (and splitting off China into a US-leaning neutral state was a geopolitical goal), the USSR had nothing to offer the US except its own dissolution, collapse, and looting which is what wound up happening.
Whoops. In my defense, the sun is coming up and I’m tired enough I had to go back and edit it like three times because I kept realizing I’d left out words, so I just uh didn’t read good there.
I had an answer ready to go for “why did Gorbachev and Deng’s respective reforms turn out different”, but I have a much less clear understanding of the minutia of Khrushchev’s policies apart from like the tractor privatization stuff that didn’t work out too good, the push to increase beef production by trying to grow more cattle feed that didn’t do so well in that climate, and the way the tacit acceptance of the “second economy” set the stage for a lot of stagnation, graft, and corruption that ultimately fed into the liberal bloc that used Gorbachev to seize power and loot everything.
Edit: I’m tired and misread the question to be about Gorbachev vs Deng.
There are several major things that stand out: Deng’s reforms were a tradeoff of accepting the bad of austerity and markets in exchange for real material concessions and access to resources and industrial capital, whereas Gorbachev just kind of shattered the central planning apparatus and began liquidating state assets, and retreated geopolitically as well, in exchange for literally nothing except more agitation and hostility from the US. Deng’s bloc also did not castigate and slander past leaders of the CPC the way Gorbachev’s liberals did to the past leaders of the CPSU, nor did they systematically dismantle the CPC and isolate regional branches from one another the way the CPSU was undermined. The CPC under Deng did not simply roll over and passively accept insurgencies like the CPSU did at the end, and instead both cracked down on violent agitators and sought to continue making some concessions to the broader public sentiment. China’s liberalizing reforms were also careful and piecemeal, getting something out of every step and preventing it from entirely upending the existing logistics system and industrial base, whereas like I mentioned in the beginning Gorbachev just kind of gutted the central planning system, destroyed the Soviet logistics system, and basically just did the liberal prayer of “the market will make it better, praise the holy line which can only ever go up!” and it did not work because of course it doesn’t work.
Some of that is that Deng’s bloc were cynical and decided to retreat from ideological goals for material strategic gains, and some of it is that the US at that point was happy to try to split off China and desperately needed China as a market both to buy skilled labor from and sell new industrial capital in a volume that American factories didn’t want to buy which made those strategic gains possible for China. Some of it is that Gorbachev was a dipshit who was apparently quite competent and well liked in a support role, but who had no good ideas of his own and on inheriting a mandate of reform and modernization found himself leaning on anticommunist extremists and elevating them into positions of power where they could censor communists and run anticommunist propaganda and just generally sabotage everything, and some of it is that the USSR was never going to get the sort of material concessions that China did because Reagan was even more of a fanatic extremist than Nixon and where China had material things to offer the US (and splitting off China into a US-leaning neutral state was a geopolitical goal), the USSR had nothing to offer the US except its own dissolution, collapse, and looting which is what wound up happening.
She’s not asking about Gorbachev. They’re asking about
and the NEP.
Whoops. In my defense, the sun is coming up and I’m tired enough I had to go back and edit it like three times because I kept realizing I’d left out words, so I just uh didn’t read good there.
I had an answer ready to go for “why did Gorbachev and Deng’s respective reforms turn out different”, but I have a much less clear understanding of the minutia of Khrushchev’s policies apart from like the tractor privatization stuff that didn’t work out too good, the push to increase beef production by trying to grow more cattle feed that didn’t do so well in that climate, and the way the tacit acceptance of the “second economy” set the stage for a lot of stagnation, graft, and corruption that ultimately fed into the liberal bloc that used Gorbachev to seize power and loot everything.