Deng Xiaoping

Paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China (1978-1992)

• Born: August 22, 1904
• Birthplace: Paifang village, Xiexing township, Guang'an county, Sichuan province, China
• Died: February 19, 1997
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Deng was a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, held various official titles, including deputy prime minister, and was China’s de facto ruler also called a paramount leader from 1978 to 1992. The rapid economic growth that China experienced after 1979 was largely the result of his economic ideas, which came to be known as “Deng Xiaoping theory.” Knowing this theory remains mandatory for Chinese college and university students.

Early Life

Deng Xiaoping (dehng zhow-pihng) came from a wealthy landlord family that owned about ten hectares of land and employed servants and farm laborers. They grew rice, wheat, sorghum, and other cereal crops, and harvested over thirteen tons of grains annually. His father, Deng Wenming, was a respected local leader whose wife (née Zhang) was childless. He then took three concubines; the first one (née Yen) bore him a daughter and three sons. Xixien was the eldest son; he took the name Xiaoping at age twenty when he joined the Chinese Communist Party. Xiaoping attended the local elementary school and middle school in the county town.

In 1919, Deng enrolled in a special French-language school in Chongqing that prepared students for the work-study program in France (begun in 1912). He was one of over eighty Sichuan students who passed the qualifying exams in 1920; they set sail for France in the fall of that year. Deng remained in France until 1924, but he did not enroll in any schools for formal study. Instead, he spent his time working in various factories, studying French, and organizing activities. He and other Chinese students also interested in Marxism, most notably Zhou Enlai and Li Lisan, founded the Chinese Communist Youth Corps in France in 1922. He was admitted to the Chinese Communist Party in 1924 and was sent to Moscow to the University of the Toilers of the East (later renamed Sun Yat-sen University) to study Marxism.

Deng returned to China in August, 1926, as a staff member of maverick warlord Marshal Feng Youxiang, who was successively a Christian, a Marxist, and later a member of the Kuomintang. Deng served in Feng’s army for one year until the Kuomintang-Communist split, when Feng expelled all the Communists on his staff.

Life’s Work

Deng rose in the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, working in the Communist underground in Wuhan, Shanghai, then at various positions in the guerrilla bases in Guangxi and Jiangxi provinces. He took part in the Long March to Yan’an while serving as the secretary-general of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He was the deputy director of the General Political Department of the Eighth Route Army during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) and also held other important positions during that war and the subsequent civil war against the Nationalist government (1946-1949). In 1954, Deng was appointed vice premier, vice chair of the National Defense Council, and party general-secretary.

In 1956, Mao Zedong launched the Hundred Flowers Campaign that allowed intellectuals to criticize the Communist Party. When the criticism became too sharp and bitter for Mao, he turned to Deng to clamp down and punish the critics for daring to speak out. Deng presided over a harsh crackdown. Between one-half to three-quarters of a million intellectuals and cadres were sent to the countryside to perform manual labor. When Mao’s Great Leap Forward (which began in 1958 and included the building of hundreds of thousands of backyard furnaces to make steel and the introduction of communes) turned into disaster and a massive famine, Deng sided with Liu Shaoqi and other “pragmatists” in the Communist Party leadership to force Mao to relinquish the state chairmanship and retire from the day-to-day running of China’s affairs. Together with Liu, who became state chair, Deng (the party’s general-secretary) and other pragmatists repaired the enormous damages inflicted by the Great Leap Forward by dismantling the communes and restoring incentives.

In 1966, Mao launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to restore himself and his radical policies to power. Liu and Deng were the principal victims of the Cultural Revolution. They were dismissed from all posts and publicly humiliated. While Liu died in jail, Deng survived to be rehabilitated and appointed vice premier in 1973 by Premier Zhou Enlai. Living with cancer, Zhou appeared to be grooming Deng as his successor, delegating to him the routine supervision of the administration.

Deng’s career met a major setback at the hands of Mao’s ambitious wife, Jiang Qing, and her radical supporters when Zhou died in January, 1976. While Hua Guofeng was appointed acting premier, Deng dropped from the scene (he fled to Canton in southern China to the protection of friendly colleagues there) and came under severe attack as a “capitalist roader” by the official newspaper, the People’s Daily. Mao’s death on September 9, 1976, was followed by a power struggle in which his widow Jiang Qing and her chief supporters (nicknamed the Gang of Four ) were ousted from power by senior leaders of the Communist Party. Thus ended the decade-long chaos called the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). By 1978, Hua Guofeng had also been edged out of power, and Deng was in control.

The Deng era (1978-1997) was characterized by the rehabilitation of the victims of the Cultural Revolution, punishment of the Gang of Four in nationally televised trials held in 1981, and ending the radical policies and chaos of the last ten years of Mao’s life. Mao was also taken off the pedestal on which he had placed himself. Deng also instituted reforms called the “four modernizations” in agriculture, industry, science and technology, and the military. This entailed the opening of China to the outside world, including sending Chinese students to study abroad. Deng called his era one in which economics were in command, not politics and ideology as during the Maoist era. The goal was to make China a modern nation by the year 2000.

In agriculture, reforms meant the dismantling of collective farms under a “responsibility” system that, in effect, restored the private farm, although the farmers did not own the land they tilled as many had before the Communists took power. The restructuring of agriculture improved the livelihood of the majority of China’s population and gave Deng a wide base of support. Industries were more difficult to restructure, and while small enterprises became privatized, major industries that employed large numbers of people remained state-owned and unprofitable. Deng left restructuring of this dangerous sector to his successors. Outside capital and know-how, in the form of joint enterprises, did, however, introduce many new industries to China.

Agricultural reforms and the partial restructuring of industry resulted in growing inequities in income between individuals and provinces. Unemployment, inflation, and rampant corruption by still-powerful communist bureaucrats became major problems. Deng was, however, willing to tolerate these problems in the interest of overall improvements in the standard of living.

In modernizing the scientific and technological sector, China needed new schools, universities, and research institutions. Thousands of Chinese students and scholars were sent to the West to learn, and Western specialists were invited to China to teach and train the Chinese. Deng faced a particularly dangerous double-edged sword: the introduction of Western sciences and technologies as well as political ideas and social ideals through these contacts. Deng and other communist leaders referred to Western ideas and ways of life from music and blue jeans to democracy as “spiritual pollution.” In 1979 human rights activist Wei Jingsheng demanded a fifth modernization that of the political process to accompany the other four modernizations. Deng had Wei and other prodemocracy activists tried and jailed on trumped-up charges.

In 1987, Deng cracked down on student protesters and dismissed his heir, party secretary Hu Yaobang, for being too sympathetic to the students. Deng and his hard-line allies’ policies culminated in the mobilization of 300,000 troops in the bloody suppression of peaceful student demonstrators on June 4, 1989, in the Tiananmen Square protests. In the process, Deng also dismissed his new heir, party secretary Zhao Ziyang, again for being too soft on the students. The massacre of students and their sympathizers in Beijing and many other cities became an indelible blot on Deng’s record.

Modernization of the military entailed downsizing the army to emphasize better training and equipment. Up to 1989, the portion of the budget allotted to the military was reduced. However, in the wake of the Tiananmen Massacre, and to ensure the loyalty of the military, Deng dramatically increased the military budget.

In 1984, Deng signed an agreement with the United Kingdom for the return of Hong Kong, controlled by Britain since 1841, to China in 1997. China agreed to allow Hong Kong to remain a special administrative region with its own laws and institutions for fifty years. The people of Hong Kong had no voice in negotiating, nor the right to reject the agreement. Since Britain had granted independence to hundreds of millions of former subjects across the globe decades before, this was hardly a triumph of China’s might as Deng and the Chinese Communists wished to indicate. He had expressed a hope to live to see Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997 but died earlier in the year.

Deng hoped that the agreement regarding Hong Kong would serve as a model to entice the Nationalist government and the people of Taiwan to accept a similar arrangement with China. However, even before the retrocession of Hong Kong, China began to renege on aspects of the agreement regarding the political rights of its people. The people of Taiwan, enjoying democratic rights and a developed-world standard of living, were unimpressed with Beijing’s offer. Deng, like Mao before him, did not renounce China’s right to use force to unify with Taiwan. Despite the general desire of Chinese people to be unified and continued dialogue between the two Chinas, the chances of reunification in the near future, while China remains under Communist rule, seem remote.

Deng was only partially successful in persuading the party elders to step down to ensure an orderly transfer of power. Despite his own “retirement” from all official positions in 1989, he retained ultimate power until his death; many other gerontocrats did likewise. He was succeeded by his last heir, Jiang Zemin.

Significance

It is too early to fully assess Deng’s place in Chinese history. He is responsible for reversing the Maoist course after 1979 and for the economic miracle that swept China afterward. However, he refused to make political reforms and insisted on retaining the Leninist dictatorship. Thus, China remained stuck with a form of government that had clearly failed worldwide. Because political liberalization, or the fifth modernization, was yet unrealized, Deng’s reforms remained partial, and China’s transformation into a modern nation remained incomplete.

Bibliography

Deng Maomao. Deng Xiaoping: My Father. New York: Basic Books, 1995. A personal, uncritical biography by Deng’s youngest daughter.

Deng Rong. Deng Xiaoping and the Culture Revolution: A Daughter Recalls the Critical Years. Translated by Sidney Shapiro. New York: C. Bertelsmann, 2005. Deng’s daughter recounts the events of her father’s life, focusing on his experiences during the Cultural Revolution.

Evans, Richard. Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin, 1997. One of many books published after Deng’s death that assesses and evaluates his historic role in China’s modern development.

Goldman, David. Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution. New York: Routledge, 1994. An evaluation of Deng’s role in late twentieth century Chinese history.

Li Zhisui. The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Translated by Tai Hung-chao. New York: Random House, 1994. The story of Mao and the court that surrounded him, by Mao’s personal physician. Includes accounts of Deng’s concerns during Mao’s last years.

Liberthal, Kenneth. Governing China, from Revolution Through Reform. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995. An important book on China since 1949, including Deng’s role and his legacy.

Marti, Michael E. China and the Legacy of Deng Xiaoping: From Communist Revolution to Capitalist Evolution. Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002. Describes Deng’s efforts to link the major elements of Chinese society in a coalition that would support his economic policies.

Salisbury, Harrison. The New Emperors: China in the Eras of Mao and Deng. Boston: Little, Brown, 1992. Well-written and interesting discussions of the Chinese leadership since 1949.

Yang, Benjamin. Deng: A Political Biography. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. An evaluation of the career of a many-faceted leader.