Herd sentiment among pundits and others who analyze the direction of Chinese affairs has always been subject to sudden shifts. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, China was mostly a neat geopolitical story in the West: Mao Zedong had died, and what perished with him was China’s long-standing focus on autarky and decades of overt opposition to the capitalist world order. Western leaders and media cheered on the rise of the smiling and friendly-seeming Deng Xiaoping. Though they were hopeful about China’s economic growth, few expected the country to rapidly emerge as an economic competitor of the first order.