Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing) (1904-1997) became the most powerful leader in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s. He served as the chairman of the Communist party's Military Commission and was the chief architect of China's modernization and economic reforms during the 1980s.

Born in Guangan, Sichuan Province, in 1904, Deng joined the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in 1924 while on a work-study program in France. Before returning to China in 1926 he went to Moscow, where he studied for several months.

During the fabled Long March of 1934-1935 Deng served first as director of the political department, and then as the political commissar, of the First Army Corps. After the war with Japan began in 1937 Deng was appointed political commissar of the 129th Division, one of the three divisions in the reorganized Communist Eighth Route Army, which was commanded by Liu Bocheng, also a native of Sichuan. The forces under the two Sichuanese grew into a large military machine and became one of the four largest Communist army units during the war. It was renamed the Second Field Army in 1946 when the civil war began. In the critical Huai-Hai battles in East China during November 1948-January 1949, Deng served as the secretary of a special five-man General Front Committee to coordinate the strategy of participating Communist troops and direct the military actions. In 1949-1950 the Second Field Army took Southwest China, and Deng became the ranking party leader there in the early 1950s.

Deng rose quickly in the leadership hierarchy after his transfer to Peking in 1952. He became CCP secretary-general in 1954 and a member of the Politburo the following year after he supervised the purge of two recalcitrant regional leaders. During the Eighth CCP Congress in 1956 Deng was elevated to the six-man Politburo Standing Committee and appointed general secretary, heading the party secretariat. By then, he had become one of the half dozen most powerful men in China.

Exile and Return

By many accounts Deng was an able, talented, and knowledgeable man. He was nicknamed "a living encyclopedia" by his colleagues. Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the architect of the PRC, allegedly pointed Deng out to Khrushchev of the U.S.S.R. and said, "See that little man there? He is highly intelligent and has a great future ahead of him." Deng visited the Soviet Union several times in the 1950s and the 1960s, as he was closely involved in Sino-Soviet relations and their dispute over the international Communist movement.

Mao and Deng parted ways in the 1960s as they disagreed over the strategy of economic development and other policies. Deng's pragmatism, embodied in his well-known remark, "It does not matter whether they are black cats or white cats; so long as they catch mice, they are good cats," was heresy to Mao's ears. Mao also resented Deng for making decisions without consulting him—he scolded Deng in a 1961 party meeting: "Which emperor did this?" In 1966 Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) and mobilized the youthful Red Guards to purge the "capitalist powerholders" in the party, such as Deng. From 1969 to 1973, Deng and his family were exiled to a "May 7 cadre school" in rural Jiangxi to undergo reeducation, in which he performed manual labor and studied the writings of Mao and Marx. Deng's elder son, Deng Pufang, was permanently crippled in an assault by Red Guards.

In the spring of 1973 Deng was brought back to Peking and reinstated a vice-premier in the wake of a major realignment of political forces, which resulted from the demise of Defense Minister Lin Piao and the purge of Lin's followers. Deng's ability and expertise were highly valued in the Chinese leadership and he quickly assumed important roles. In late 1973 he carried out a major reshuffle of regional military leaders and was elevated to the Politburo. In April 1974 he journeyed to New York to address a special United Nations session, in which he expounded Mao's theory of the "Three Worlds."

As Premier Chou Enlai was hospitalized after May 1974, the burden of leadership and administration increasingly fell on Deng's shoulders. In January 1975 Deng was elevated to a party vice-chairman, the senior vice-premier, and the army chief of staff. However, Deng's eagerness to carry out "four modernizations" and the political reforms alienated Mao and other radicals led by Mao's wife Chiang Ch'ing (Jiang Qing).

Thus, soon after Premier Chou died on January 8, 1976, Deng became the target of attack in the Chinese media, and on April 7 the party Politburo passed a resolution at Mao's urging to oust Deng from all leadership posts. After Mao's death in September 1976 Deng's allies prevailed and Deng was reinstated in July 1977, the opposition of new Party Chairman Hua Guofeng not withstanding.

After Deng's political comeback and in his struggle for ascendency thereafter, his foremost task was to destroy the cult of Mao and to downgrade Mao's ideological authority. Another powerful measure of de-Maoization was to put the "Gang of Four" on public trial, which began in Peking on November 20, 1980. These four radical leaders, including Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing, were the late chairman's most ardent supporters and the prime movers behind the GPCR, on which they rode to power. The trial symbolized the triumph of veteran officials, led by Deng, who had fallen victim to the radical crusade between 1966 and 1976.

Moreover, Deng also used the trial as the coup de grace against Chairman Hua Guofeng. Although Hua was not a defendant, he did collaborate with the radicals before Mao's death. In a central committee plenum in June 1981 Hu Yaobang, Deng's protege, replaced Hua as the party chairman.

Reform Leader

Deng's economic policies required opening China to the rest of the world in order to attract foreign investment and to educate students abroad in the latest technologies. Accordingly, the People's Republic of China in 1978 signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan. In 1979, Deng obtained his nation's official recognition from the United States. Sino-Russian relations were gradually improved over the next decade, and he achieved the long-cherished goal of recovering the British colony of Hong Kong through an agreement scheduled for implementation in 1997.

These diplomatic successes supplemented and eased major changes in the domestic economy. Deng found China's industrial progress impeded by the imbalances of the Cultural Revolution, which stressed investment in heavy industry while virtually ignoring, consumer production, agriculture, transportation, and energy production. As a result, wages and farm prices were too low, and consumer goods were in short supply.

To combat this situation, Deng reduced capital investment in heavy industry, increased prices paid by the state to farmers, and arranged a series of bonuses to raise workers' incomes. Farmers were encouraged to sell more produce privately, and a rapid growth of free markets for farm produce occurred. The communal labor system was virtually eliminated from the rural communes, and fields were leased to farm families on terms that allowed them more autonomy in determining what crops to plant. Agricultural production increased dramatically while, at the same time, a significant proportion of the rural population transferred its activities from farming to various kinds of light industry and trade. More free markets sprang up for distribution of these products, and some state-owned factories were placed under the control of their managers, who were instructed to take into account the profitability and market conditions for their products.

Fought to Maintain Political Stability

Throughout these reforms, Deng insisted upon maintaining China's socialist system. As ever greater reliance was placed on market forces to determine prices, it became increasingly difficult to balance socialist principles with capitalist effects. The reforms resulted in a generally improved standard of living but produced inequalities that were greatly resented. Inflation in the 1980s, a serious problem for the first time in a generation, accompanied increased unemployment and ever-growing disparities in living standards. Deng's inability to reform the blatant corruption and enrichment of many party and government officials and their families created new tensions.

Such tensions fed the long-smoldering discontent of academics who had opposed the party's dictatorship from the beginning and fueled repeated popular demands, especially among students, for a greater degree of democracy in China. In 1979, some of Deng's supporters had openly opposed his dictatorship and called for a democratic political system, and it was Deng himiself who led the suppression of their democracy movement, imprisoned some of their leaders, and banned unofficial organizations and publications. Again in December of 1986, widespread unauthorized student demonstrations were repressed by the government. Hu Yaobang was blamed for this movement, forced to resign, and became a hero to the students. Zhao Ziyang replaced him as head of the party.

Deng's insistence through the 1980s on maintaining China's socialist system while putting his economic reforms into place had by 1989 forced him into an untenable corner of contradictions; he was presiding over increasing economic disparities in an ostensibly socialist society. The opposition's discontent ripened that year into plans for renewed student demonstrations on the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. When Hu Yaoband died in April, the demonstrators' leaders incorporated into their plans memorials that resembled their 1976 protests following Chou Enlai's death.

Focusing on demands for greater democracy, a series of student demonstrations at Tiananmen Square coincided with Mikhail Gorbachev's official state visit to Beijing and proved a serious embarrassment to China's leaders—one made worse by world-wide television coverage. The democracy movement quickly spread to other cities, threatening both social stability and Communist party leadership.

Deng, who began his political career 70 years earlier on one side of the May Fourth Movement of 1919, now found himself on quite another as party leaders began to weigh the possibility of compromise with the students. He chose, instead, confrontation. Restructuring his alliances, he forced Zhao Ziyang's resignation and relied on his old military friends to suppress the demonstrations. The violence that followed on June 4, 1989, is believed to have killed hundreds of demonstrators in Beijing alone.

Final Years

Worldwide condemnation of the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the uneasy domestic peace that followed brought a tightening of controls over the Chinese people, but did not shake Deng from his dedication to the Communist party's dictatorship nor his pursuit of modernization and economic reform.

From time to time, Deng compromised with other leaders, slowed down the pace of reform, or shifted priorities to placate his critics, but this did not seriously effect Deng's control of the regime's direction. Recognizing his advanced age, Deng sought to assure continuation of his "open door" policy and other political and economic reforms by putting CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, Premier Zhao Ziyang, and many other like-minded younger officials in positions of responsibility. In November of 1989, Deng resigned his last official position as head of the Central Military Commission. However, he retained paramount authority and continued to guide Chinese policy from his retirement.

The failed Soviet coup in August 1991 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Communist party reinforced Deng's belief that the fate of China, as well as that of Chinese communism, depended heavily on the state of China's economy. Deng understood well that economic reform meant turning loose forces that might eventually topple the Communist party but believed strongly in the party's ability to deliver economic growth and rising incomes. Deng's commitment to change and chastisement of those who dared oppose him forced many hard-line conservative elders to retire and cleared the way for Communist party to fully embrace his reforms. In 1992 the 14th Party Congress signalled the acceptance of Deng's ideas by making a socialist market economy a national goal for the year 2000.

In his last years Deng instigated debate within the Communist party on the need to balance economic reform with political stability, but was unable to impose a convincing plan for stability after his death. As Deng's health slipped into precipitous decline, the powerful patriarch became farther removed from his duties of daily decision-making. His last public appearance was during lunar new year festivities in early 1994, and on February 19, 1997 he died at age 92.

Further Reading

For an excellent biographical article on Deng's life and the economic changes he brought to China see Patrick E. Tyler's essay in the The New York Times, February 16, 1997.

Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing): Speeches and Writings (1984) and Parris H. Chang, "Chinese Politics: Deng's Turbulent Quest," in Problems of Communism (January-February 1981) provide additional information on Deng's political activities. TIME magazine recognized his reforms by twice naming him "Man of the Year," in 1976 and 1985. □

Deng Xiaoping

Born: August 22, 1904
Guangan, Sichuan Province, China
Died: February 19, 1997
Peking, China
Chinese politician and leader

Deng Xiaoping became the most powerful leader in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s. He served as the chairman of the Communist Party's Military Commission and was the chief architect of China's economic improvements during the 1980s.

Early life

Deng Xiaoping was born Deng Xixian in Guangan, Sichuan Province, on August 22, 1904. His parents were Deng Wenming, a relatively well-to-do landowner, and the second of his four wives, Deng Danshi. Deng grew up with one sister, two brothers, and the children of his father's other wives. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1924 while on a high school work-study program in France. (Communism is a political system where goods and services are controlled by the government.) Before returning to China in 1926 he went to Moscow, where he studied for several months.

During the fabled Long March of 1934 and 1935, when Communist Chinese traveled six thousand miles to set up a home in inland China, Deng served first as director of the political department. After the war with Japan began in 1937 Deng was appointed political commissar (party official) of the 129th Division. The force grew into a large military machine and became one of the four largest Communist army units during the war. It was renamed the Second Field Army in 1946 when the civil war began.

Deng rose quickly in the leadership hierarchy after his transfer to Peking, China, in 1952. He became CCP secretary-general in 1954 and a member of the Politburo (ruling party). During the Eighth CCP Congress in 1956 Deng was elevated to the six-man Politburo Standing Committee and appointed general secretary. By then, he had become one of the most powerful men in China.

Exile and return

By many accounts Deng was an able, talented, and intelligent man. He was nicknamed "a living encyclopedia" by his peers. Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976), the creator of the People's Republic of China (PRC), pointed out Deng's abilities to Nikita Khrushchev (1894– 1971) of the Soviet Union, the former Communist country which consisted of Russia and other states. Deng visited the Soviet Union several times in the 1950s and the 1960s, as he was closely involved in Chinese-Soviet relations and their dispute over the international communist movement.

Mao and Deng parted ways in the 1960s as they disagreed over the strategy of economic development and other policies. Mao disapproved of Deng for making decisions without consulting him. In 1966 Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) and mobilized the youthful Red Guards (the Communist army) to rid the party of "capitalist powerholders," such as Deng. From 1969 to 1973, Deng and his family were exiled (forced to leave) to rural Jiangxi to undergo reeducation, during which time he performed manual labor and studied the writings of Mao and Karl Marx (1818–1893).

In the spring of 1973 Deng was brought back to Peking and reinstated as a vice-premier after a major realignment of political forces. Deng's ability and expertise were highly valued in the Chinese leadership, and he quickly assumed important roles. In late 1973 he carried out a major reorganization of regional military leaders and was elevated to the Politburo.

As Premier Chou Enlai was hospitalized after May 1974, leadership increasingly fell on Deng's shoulders. In January 1975 Deng was elevated to a party vice-chairman, the senior vice-premier, and the army chief of staff. However, Deng's eagerness to carry out political reforms (improvements) pushed away Mao and other radicals, and Deng was soon forced from power.

After Mao's death in July 1977, Deng began his political comeback. His first task was to destroy Mao's followers and to downgrade Mao's lasting authority. Another powerful measure of de-Maoization was to put the "Gang of Four" on public trial, which began in Peking on November 20, 1980. These four radical leaders, including Mao's widow Chiang Ch'ing, were the late chairman's most devoted supporters. The trial symbolized the triumph of veteran officials, led by Deng, who had fallen victim to Mao's radical changes between 1966 and 1976.

Reform leader

Deng's economic policies required opening China to the rest of the world in order to attract foreign investment and to educate students abroad in the latest technologies. Accordingly, the PRC in 1978 signed a Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Japan. In 1979, Deng obtained the nation's official recognition from the United States. Chinese-Soviet relations were gradually improved over the next decade, and he achieved the long-cherished goal of recovering the British colony of Hong Kong through an agreement implemented in 1997.

When the Chinese economy began to crumble, Deng reduced investment in heavy industry, increased prices paid by the state to farmers, and arranged a series of bonuses to raise workers' incomes. Farmers were encouraged to sell more produce privately, and a rapid growth of free markets for farm produce occurred.

Fought to maintain political stability

Throughout these reforms, Deng insisted upon maintaining China's socialist system (a social system where the government produces and distributes goods to the people). The reforms Deng installed generally improved the quality of life but produced inequalities throughout China. In the 1980s the economy began to slip; unemployment increased and produced growing difference in living standards between the classes.

In 1979 some of Deng's supporters had openly opposed his dictatorship (one ruler with absolute power) and called for a democratic political system. Deng himself shut down this democracy movement by imprisoning some of their leaders, and banning unofficial organizations and publications. In December of 1986, widespread student demonstrations (protests) were shut down by the government.

Deng's insistence through the 1980s on maintaining China's socialist system while putting his economic reforms into place had by 1989 forced him into a corner. Focusing on demands for greater democracy (a government by the people), a series of student demonstrations at Tiananmen Square occurred during Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's (1931–) official state visit to Beijing and proved a serious embarrassment to China's leaders—one made worse by worldwide television coverage. The violence that followed on June 4, 1989, is believed to have killed hundreds of demonstrators in Beijing alone.

Final years

Worldwide criticism of the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the uneasy domestic peace that followed brought a tightening of controls over the Chinese people, but did not shake Deng from his dedication to the Communist Party's dictatorship. Recognizing his advanced age, Deng sought to continue his "open door" policy and other political and economic reforms by putting CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, Premier Zhao Ziyang, and many other younger officials in positions of responsibility. In November of 1989, Deng resigned his last official position as head of the Central Military Commission.

In his last years Deng started debate within the Communist Party on the need to balance economic reform with political stability. As Deng's health declined, he became further removed from his duties of daily decision-making. His last public appearance was during lunar new year festivities in early 1994, and on February 19, 1997, he died in Peking, China, at age ninety-two.

For More Information

Chang, Parris H. "Chinese Politics: Deng's Turbulent Quest." Problems of Communism (January-February, 1981).

Evans, Richard. Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. New York: Viking, 1994.

Tyler, Patrick E. The New York Times. (February 16, 1997).

Yang, Benjamin. Deng: A Political Biography. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Deng Xiaoping ( Teng Hsaio-p'ing) (b. Aug. 1904, d. 19 Feb. 1997). Chinese leader 1978–97 Born at Guang'an (Sichuan), he studied with Zhou Enlai in France (1920–5), where he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (1924). He studied briefly in Moscow before returning to China in 1926. He led several uprisings against the Guomindang, and was the political commissar of the Communist 7th and 8th Armies. A devout follower of Mao Zedong, he went to Jianxi in 1931, and took part in the Long March. In the Sino-Japanese War, his rise to prominence continued as a political commissar in the 8th Route Army and the 129th Division, until in 1945 he joined the CCP Central Committee. Owing to his experience in battle, he played an important part in the Communist success in the Chinese Civil War, e.g. through his part in the Huai-Hai campaign. In 1949 he was First Secretary of the party's south-west bureau, and in 1954 was made Secretary-General of the Chinese Communist Party, with a seat in the Politburo. He was a central figure in the growing ideological and then political alienation between China and the Soviet Union. In the Cultural Revolution, he was deprived of all posts and had to recant his alleged ‘reactionary-bourgeois’ tendencies. Zhou Enlai reinstated his old friend, and Deng became Vice-Premier of the State Council in 1973. His renewed advance peaked when he practically ran the government during Zhou's illness. He was dismissed after Zhou's death in 1976, becoming a victim of the Gang of Four.

After the arrest of the Gang of Four, he was reinstated once again in July 1977. He now became the strong man in Chinese politics, outmanoeuvring the more ideological Hua Guofeng by appropriating Mao's slogan of ‘Practice as the sole criterion of truth’. With this pragmatist platform, his leadership was confirmed at the Third Plenum of the 11th CCP congress in December 1978. Subsequently, he played down the memory and teachings of Mao Zedong, and emphasized instead the need for socialist modernization. This led him to pursue a careful balance between continued political ‘democratic dictatorship’ by the Communist Party on the one hand, and greater economic liberalism to encourage individual enterprise and economic growth on the other. It explains his readiness to suppress all opposition, most notably at Tiananmen Square in 1989, while granting his people an unprecedented amount of personal freedom in other spheres. In foreign policy, he combined a high degree of pragmatism with nationalism. He was a pivotal influence in the taking up of diplomatic relations with the USA in 1979, and normalized Sino-Soviet relations in 1989. At the same time, he was insistent on the return to the People's Republic of China of all territories under outside control. He thus negotiated the return of Hong Kong and Macao, while continuing to call for the return of Taiwan to its dominion. Deng was the most important leader of the People's Republic of China after Mao. He became increasingly affected by Parkinson's disease, and was succeeded by Jiang Zemin.

Deng Xiaoping or Teng Hsiao-p'ing , 1904–97, Chinese revolutionary and government leader, b. Sichuan prov. Deng became a member of the Chinese Communist party while studying in France (1920–25) and later (1926) attended Sun Yatsen Univ., Moscow. A veteran of the long march , he joined the party's Central Committee in 1945 and organized the land-reform program (1949–51). Called to Beijing as deputy premier (1952), he rose rapidly, joining the Politburo Standing Committee in 1956. A pragmatist, he worked with Liu Shaoqi after the Great Leap Forward to restore the economy. In the Cultural Revolution he was attacked as the "Number Two Capitalist Roader" after Liu. Purged, he was sent to work in a tractor factory (1966). Reinstated by Zhou Enlai as deputy premier (1973), he took over the administration when Zhou fell ill, eagerly implementing Zhou's "Four Modernizations." After Zhou's death in 1976, Deng was again purged.

In 1977 he again became deputy premier, as well as vice chairman of the party, and later (1979) visited the United States to seek closer ties. For most of the 1980s he served as head of the party and government military commissions and the newly created party Central Advisory Commission. Although not holding any of the highest ranking official posts, Deng became the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong . In 1981 Deng strengthened his position in China by replacing Hua Guofeng as Communist party chairman with his own protégé, Hu Yaobang . When Hu was forced from power, Zhao Ziyang , another Deng protégé, became party leader, and later when Zhao was ousted, a third Deng associate, Jiang Zemin , replaced Zhao. Deng oversaw the loosening of government control of the economy in order to promote development while insisting on tight party control of the government and politics. He resigned from his last party post in 1989, designating Jiang Zemin his successor, after supporting the use of military force to suppress the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

Bibliography: See E. F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011).

Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) Chinese statesman. He took part in the Long March, served in the Red Army, and became a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1945. After the establishment of the People's Republic (1949) he held several important posts, becoming general secretary of the party in 1956. During the Cultural Revolution, Deng was denounced for capitalist tendencies and dismissed. He returned to government in 1973, was purged by the Gang of Four in 1976, but reinstated in 1977 after the death of Mao Zedong. Within three years Deng had ousted Hua Guofeng to become the dominant leader of party and government. He introduced rapid economic modernization, encouraging foreign investment, but without social and political liberalization. Deng officially retired in 1987, but was still essentially in control at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989). In 1993, Jiang Zemin became president.

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Deng Xiaoping (or Teng Hsiao-p'ing) (1904–97) Chinese Communist statesman, Vice-Premier (1973–76; 1977–80); Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (1977–80). Discredited during the Cultural Revolution, he was reinstated in 1977, becoming the most prominent exponent of economic modernization, improving relations with the West, and taking a firm stance in relation to the Soviet Union. Despite the announcement of his retirement in 1989, he was regarded until the end of his life as the effective leader of China. In 1989 his orders led to the massacre of some 2000 pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.