“The present world is an open one. China’s past backwardness was due to its closed-door policy [to trade]. After the founding of the People’s Republic, we were blockaded by others and so the country remained closed to some extent, which created great difficulties for us. We are suggesting that we should develop a little faster and open up to the outside. So, we have opened fourteen medium and large coastal cities to foreign investment, manufacturing, and trade. Our socialist economic base is so huge that it can absorb tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign funds without shaking our socialist foundations. Thus, foreign investment will serve as a major supplement to the building of socialism in our country. We believe that the road we have chosen—building socialism with Chinese characteristics—is the right one. We have followed this road for five and a half years and the pace of development has so far exceeded our expectations.”

Deng Xiaoping, leader of the communist party of China, speech to a Japanese delegation, 1984

All of the following statements about the 1980s and 1990s are factually accurate. Which could have best been cited at the time to explain a limitation in Deng Xiaoping’s arguments about the benefits of enacting the reforms proposed in the passage?

A. The economic production of many communist states declined partly because they did not have the capital to invest in new manufacturing centers or repair existing centers.
B. Some Asian states were forced to adopt free-trade, open-market policies as part of receiving economic assistance from the International Monetary Fund.
C. Some Asian states reformed their economies based both on free-trade, open-market policies and the Japanese model of close cooperation between the government bureaucracy and large corporations.
D. The Soviet Union collapsed in part because the implementation of economic liberalization policies exposed the weakness of its economy.