By the late Qing, however, the rhetoric of the “foreign-affairs faction” (yangwu pai) proclaimed the benefits of foreign trade and technology for building “a wealthy state and powerful military.” This formula was not far from Deng Xiaoping’s, lacking only the “Socialist” component. It assured establishment elites of the late empire that foreign technology would be overlaid with Chinese characteristics because the political system would remain solidly based on Confucianism.