Deng Xiaoping

The largest change of direction any party on this list has made. From 1978 Deng steered the Chinese Communist Party away from Maoist class struggle towards 'reform and opening': household farming, special economic zones and foreign investment, while keeping the party's monopoly on power. Hundreds of millions of people left extreme poverty in the decades that followed. The other half of the record is the order to clear Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the one-child policy enforced under his leadership.