AFTER ploughing through the 418 pages which comprise the third volume of Deng Xiaoping's collected works, the reader might be expected to have a clearer idea of what ''building socialism with Chinese characteristics'' actually entails.
On the contrary, despite the book being heavily edited to make the patriarch's utterances more comprehensible to mere mortals, the reader has to search very carefully to find anything that is more than just a re-print of the stock phrases and slogans used by the People's Daily over the past 15 years.
As such, many of those in Beijing who have been instructed to study and learn from volume three and arm themselves with Mr Deng's thoughts still have great difficulty explaining in any detail what his theories are all about.
Asked to elucidate the helmsman's basic economic policies, a young government official who had the additional benefit of political study classes on volume three that morning, pondered a while and said: ''Good question. I'll have to think about that one.'' In fact, just about the only reply anyone could come up with was something safe and simple like ''reform and opening up'' or ''taking economic construction as the base''.
No one interviewed on the subject seemed able or willing to hold a sustained and detailed conversation on what is being hyped as the most important publication of the decade.
For many readers, a casual glance at volume three has convinced them there is nothing really new to be learnt from perusing the book. And one university teacher who did read it cover to cover wished he hadn't.