The emphasis on industrialization combined with enormous population growth led to a fairly unstable agricultural sector. By the time of Mao Zedong's death in 1976, the industrial and agricultural sectors were severely troubled. The new regime of Deng Xiaoping did not attempt to fill the void by fostering new social ideals but rather by promising the masses a better material life. A better material life has certainly resulted for some in China. Consumer goods, produced domestically and imported, are available on an unprecedented scale.
Some people have, and spend, amounts of money unimaginable just twenty years ago.
Although it is risky to generalize on the basis of personal experience and anecdote, the changes are startling to one who has visited China frequently almost since the reforms began. I arrived in China to teach at a teachers college in January 1979. The city of about 450,000 in Henan Province, in north central China, was considered a fairly poor city in a relatively poor province. At that time, there was no hot running water anywhere in the city. Most people still used latrines.