Mao went to his reward.
Deng Xiao Ping came in. "Let a hundred flowers bloom." They oscillate back and forth between capitalism and communism. It's the old "balance between greed and fear," with noodles and open toilets.
More generally, I’ve been musing, the pendulum moves slowest and spends more time at extremes than in the middle, where it is moving the fastest and just passing through.
Not a model, more of an image—but it seems to apply to a lot of social, political, and religious attitudes.