Since December 1978, social policy in China has followed a more openly elitist direction than in any period since 1949. The conservative drift in many policies is unmistakable, but in one respect there is concern — Party opposition to the rapid growth of bureaucratic privilege and abuse of political position. Mao had struck harshly at non-Party intellectuals, urban entrepreneurs, scientists and politically inactive youth. These groups are part of the social base for the new top leadership. A set of demobilizing reforms and purges aimed to route the radical leaders have been ordered by the Deng faction to intimidate their followers, as well as to discredit the mass-campaign style of work in order to replace it with orthodox Party-state structures. Some resistance has followed, but the increasing privatization of the economy created an absolutely larger petty-bourgeoisie which formed a new social layer supporting Deng. Generous back-pay and compensation for those weeded out by the Cultural Revolution gave a material basis for new inequalities. Upper-class communists were once again able to organize privileged, elitist education for their progeny. Finally, economic policy, including the new tolerance of patriotic Hong Kong capitalists, gave a new lease of life to entrepreneurs, some with foreign ties. A coalition of Party bureaucrats, civil servants, academics and businessmen has little time for socialist egalitarianism and Mao's radicalism.