timelets

Deng has no problem acknowledging outstanding foreign performance. When he visited Nissan in Japan in 1978 he said, "today I have learnt what modernization is like." When he came to write an inscription, he said, "learn from the great, diligent, valiant and intelligent Japanese people. This is recognizably the same Deng Xiaoping who shortly thereafter toured the United States and was photographed in Texas wearing a cowboy hat.

Deng's commitment to the open door policy has been early and consistent, and more thorough than most of his colleagues. He appears to approach foreign countries without defensiveness. He is not sensitive about national sovereignty considerations implied in the policy of Special Economic Zones, and he is willing to give generous and apparently heartfelt praise to advanced foreign experiences.

Source: Deng Siaoping: The Economist, by Barry Naughton.
The China Quarterly, No. 135, Special Issue: Deng Xiaoping: An Assessment (Sep., 1993), pp. 491-514

http://www.jstor.org/stable/654099