Deng Xiaoping

I

Introduction

Deng Xiaoping or Teng Hsiao-p’ing (1904-1997), Chinese Communist leader who served as the de facto ruler of China from 1976 to 1997. Under Deng, who survived two purges before he succeeded Mao Zedong, China developed into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

II

Early Years

Deng was born into a landlord family in southern Sichuan Province. His original name was Deng Xixian. His early education was in the Confucian classics of Chinese history, literature, and philosophy, which had been the basis of Chinese education. In middle school Deng learned the “modern” subjects of math, science, and geography.

In 1920, at age 16, Deng traveled to France on a work-study program. There he supported himself by working in factories, where he gained firsthand experience of a worker’s harsh life. In 1924 Deng joined the European branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which had been founded three years earlier by Chinese revolutionary Zhou Enlai. From France, Deng traveled to Moscow in 1925 where he studied at the Communist University for Toilers of the East and Sun Yat-sen University.

By 1927 he was back in China and working in the CCP’s Shanghai office. The CCP sent him to Guangxi Province (now Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region) in 1929, where he helped establish a Communist military base. The Guangxi troops suffered heavy losses against the Kuomintang (KMT) and regional warlords in 1930 and, as a result, Deng joined Mao Zedong in the Jiangxi Soviet, a Communist-controlled region in southeastern China. While there, Deng was demoted by the CCP for supporting Mao, who believed the CCP’s foreign advisers were too influential in Chinese affairs.

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Deng participated in the Long March, when the Communists broke through KMT forces surrounding the Jiangxi Soviet in 1934 and fled to northern China. At the Zunyi Conference held along the way, Mao’s ideas about the party’s future were adopted, setting the stage for his rise to CCP leadership. Deng, meanwhile, served as the political instructor for the Red Army First Corps led by Lin Biao. After the Long March Deng was promoted to political commissar for the Red Army; he held this post throughout both the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the Chinese civil war between the Communists and the KMT (1945-1949). In 1945 he was elected to the CCP Central Committee.

III

Rocky Road to Power

After the CCP won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Deng rapidly moved up the party ranks under Mao’s patronage. From his initial post as vice chairman of the Southwest Regional Commission (1949-1952), Deng became vice premier of the State Economic Commission (1952-1954), and then secretary general of the Central Committee (1954-1966). While serving as secretary general, Deng worked with Liu Shaoqi and Zhou Enlai to enact moderate policies after the disastrous failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, an economic plan intended to boost China’s agricultural and industrial production. In contrast to Mao’s advocacy of revolutionary zeal, Deng distinguished himself as a pragmatist. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) pragmatism was vilified by Maoist radicals and Deng was attacked as a “capitalist roader.” He was removed from office and placed under house arrest. Deng’s family also suffered. His eldest son, Deng Pufang, became a paraplegic after falling from a window while being tormented by the Red Guards, Mao’s militant student supporters. With the help of Zhou Enlai, Deng returned to Beijing in 1973 and was promoted to vice premier of China, and then vice chairman of the CCP in 1975. After Zhou’s death in 1976 Deng was purged again by the radical Gang of Four, the chief supporters of the Cultural Revolution. He went into exile in Guangdong Province and lived under the protection of provincial leaders. When Mao died in 1976 the Gang of Four lost their support within the CCP and were arrested for their Cultural Revolution activities. Deng returned to Beijing in 1977 and was reinstated as a member of the ruling Politburo by Premier Hua Guofeng. By 1980 Deng forced Hua from office and became the undisputed leader of China. He placed his protégé, Zhao Ziyang, in the position of premier. Although his main official appointments were as chairman of the Central Military Commission (1981-1989) and chairman of the CCP Central Advisory Commission (1982-1987), Deng’s power lay in his control of the military.

Beginning in 1978 Deng took steps to repair the damage of the Cultural Revolution. In the face of declining Communist prestige, his overall aim was to stabilize and strengthen China, thus securing Communist rule. He called for the “Four Modernizations” of agriculture, industry, military, and science and technology. In agriculture, rural communes were discontinued, and peasants were allowed to lease land and sell their harvest in markets. In industry, Deng oversaw the establishment of special economic zones (SEZs), such as Shenzhen and Xiamen, where foreign investment was encouraged and new factories were established. Deng modernized the military by reducing the number of soldiers and improving military technology with advanced weapons systems. To improve science and technology, thousands of students were sent abroad, particularly to the United States, to study science and engineering.

In foreign affairs, Deng developed closer ties with Japan and the West. He traveled to the United States and Japan in 1979, opening the way for better diplomatic and economic relations after decades of isolation. In the 1980s Deng’s government negotiated the return to Chinese sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, and Macao from Portugal in 1999.

Deng also attempted to reclaim the prestige of the Communist Party. In 1980 he oversaw the revision of CCP history, which praised Mao Zedong’s accomplishments up until the late 1950s, but blamed Mao for the errors of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Deng also called for the “rehabilitation” of past leaders who had been labeled enemies in the Cultural Revolution, including former Defense Minister Peng Dehuai and Liu Shaoqi. In 1984 Deng reformed the CCP to meet the challenges of modernization by retiring older cadres (government administrators), recruiting younger professionals, and fighting against corruption.

While Deng’s programs produced rapid economic development, Deng insisted they be carried out under CCP leadership. Nevertheless, his policies unleashed unforeseen social turmoil and aspirations for greater political freedom first seen in the “Democracy Wall” movement of 1978 and 1979, in which posters were hung on a wall in Beijing to express public opinion about government policy. In the late 1980s a student-led prodemocracy movement developed that culminated in the Tiananmen Square Protest of 1989. Intent on maintaining social order and the power of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng approved the bloody massacre that ended the Tiananmen protests on June 4, 1989. He purged his onetime protégé Zhao Ziyang who had been sympathetic to the prodemocracy movement.

Deng resigned from his last official post in November 1989, but retained paramount authority. Although he was physically weak and showing signs of Parkinson disease, Deng toured southern China in 1992 and gave his approval to the economic development there. This touched off a period of unprecedented economic growth in China. During the mid-1990s Deng was no longer seen in public. He died from complications of Parkinson disease in February 1997.

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