The traditional foreign trade system was entirely unsuited to the opening of the Chinese economy to the outside world and the new development strategy that began to emerge in the late 1970s. As early as 1975, after he had been named a vice-chairman of the party and first vice-premier, Deng Xiaoping took the lead in drafting three major party documents that, if formally adopted, would have launched China on a reform course as early as the mid-1970s (Harding, 49). Among other changes, Deng proposed a major transformation of China's foreign trade and investment policies. Most important, Deng decisively rejected the Maoist policy, most obvious during the Cultural Revolution, of pursuing a course of technological and financial self-reliance. Deng believed accelerating the pace of industrial development would require the selective import of advanced technologies from abroad. This strategy had far-reaching implications for Chinese strategies for both exports and for international finance. The document Deng drafted unequivocally advocated a rapid acceleration of exports, concentrating on industrial and mining products. In contrast with the then prevailing Chinese practice of eschewing foreign credits, except for short-term trade finance, Deng advocated the utilization of both conventional long-term credits and long-term credits to be repaid by the export of coal and petroleum.

The Cultural Revolution radicals, who had engineered Deng's purge in the mid-1960s and opposed his rehabilitation in 1973, learned of the substance of his program (Lieberthal, 33–49).