Wealth & Money Quote by Deng Xiaoping

Deng’s line lands like a controlled detonation inside communist orthodoxy: a blunt refusal to romanticize deprivation, paired with a daring rehabilitation of wealth as something not merely tolerated but celebrated. The first sentence is defensive and corrective. By insisting that poverty is not socialism, Deng severs a long-standing moral alibi of revolutionary states: that scarcity is proof of purity. He’s telling cadres and citizens alike that egalitarian misery is not a badge of ideological success, it’s evidence of failure.

The second sentence is the real provocation. “To be rich is glorious” repurposes the language of honor and virtue - a vocabulary traditionally reserved for sacrifice and collective struggle - and hands it to material advancement. “Glorious” is not neutral; it’s a moral adjective. Deng isn’t just permitting people to get wealthy, he’s trying to rewire what ambition means in a society trained to distrust it.

The context is the late-1970s/1980s pivot after Mao: China emerging from the wreckage of the Cultural Revolution, desperate for legitimacy built on results rather than slogans. The subtext is political triage. Deng needs growth fast, and growth needs incentives, entrepreneurship, and uneven outcomes. So the quote performs a balancing act: it preserves the banner of “socialism” while quietly smuggling in market logic, reframing inequality as a transitional cost rather than a betrayal.

It’s also a warning shot at hardliners: if your version of socialism can’t deliver a better life, it doesn’t deserve to rule.