Yellow cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.

This aphorism is associated with Deng Xiaoping’s push for pragmatic economic policy in the People’s Republic of China, especially as he argued for “seeking truth from facts” and judging policies by results rather than ideological purity. The saying is commonly invoked to summarize the spirit of the reform era that gathered force after Deng’s return to political prominence in the late 1970s, when market mechanisms and experimentation (such as special economic zones) were introduced within a socialist framework. In popular retellings, the “cat” metaphor is presented as a rebuttal to doctrinaire debates—what matters is whether a policy works (catches mice), not whether it is labeled “socialist” or “capitalist.”

The line argues for consequentialism in governance: effectiveness is the primary criterion of value. By reducing ideological categories (“yellow/black,” often rendered “white/black”) to irrelevant surface traits, it reframes political and economic choices as tools to solve concrete problems. In Deng’s reformist legacy, the metaphor became shorthand for legitimizing hybrid approaches—state direction combined with market incentives—so long as they improved productivity and living standards. It also signals a broader rhetorical move: replacing moralized factional disputes with measurable outcomes, thereby making experimentation and policy flexibility appear not as betrayal of principle but as fidelity to practical goals.

1) “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
2) “Black cat or white cat, if it can catch mice, it’s a good cat.”
3) “No matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat; a cat that catches mice is a good cat.”