Leader of the Chinese Communist Party, after 1978 the dominant figure in Chinese politics, born in Sichuan province, C China. He studied in France, where he joined the Communist Party, and in the Soviet Union, and became associated with Mao Zedong during the period of the Jiangxi Soviet (192834). In 1954 he became secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party, but reacted strongly against the excesses of the Great Leap Forward (19589). When Mao launched the Cultural Revolution (1966), Deng was criticized and purged along with Liu Shaoqi, but retained the confidence of Premier Zhou Enlai and was restored to power in 1974. Again dismissed in 1976, after the death of Mao he was restored once more to power, and from 1978 took China through a rapid course of pragmatic reforms. His prestige was severely damaged by his role in the repression of the mass protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Deng never held office as the head of state or the head of government, but served as the de facto leader of the People's Republic of China from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.Deng formed the core of the "second generation" CCP leadership.
Background
Deng, a Hakka, was born Deng Xixian on August 22, 1904 in Paifang village in Xiexing township, Guang'an County, Sichuan Province.
Deng married 3 times. His first wife, Zhang Xiyuan, one of his schoolmates from Moscow, died when she was 24, a few days after giving birth to Deng's first child, a baby girl, who also died. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, and a year later married Deng in front of Mao's cave dwelling in Yan'an. They had five children: three daughters (Deng Lin, Deng Nan, Deng Rong) and two sons (Deng Pufang, Deng Zhifang).
Early career
In the summer of 1920, Deng Xiaoping graduated from the Chongqing Preparatory School. Deng, the youngest of all the Chinese students, had just turned 16 (Spence 1999, 310).* He spent most of his time in France working, first at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in central France, then later as a fitter in the Renault factory in the Paris suburb of Billancourt, as a fireman on a locomotive and as a kitchen helper in restaurants.
In France, under the influence of his seniors (Zhao Shiyan, Zhou Enlai and others), Deng began to study Marxism and do political propaganda work. During 1926 Deng studied at Moscow in the then-USSR.
In 1929 Deng led the Baise Uprising in Guangxi province against the KMT government. The uprising soon failed and Deng went to the Central Soviet Area in Jiangxi province.
He was a veteran of the Long March, during which Deng served as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In late November 1949, Deng led the final assault on KMT forces under the direct command of Chiang Kai-shek in his native Sichuan. The city of Chongqing fell to the PLA on December 1 and Deng was immediately appointed mayor and political commissar. This last mainland Chinese city to be held by the KMT fell December 10 and Chiang fled to Taiwan on the same day.) When the PRC was founded in 1949 Deng was sent to oversee issues in the Southwestern Region, and acted as its First Secretary.
Ascension and Purges
As a supporter of Mao Zedong, Deng was named by Mao to several important posts in the new government, including General Secretary of the Communist Party, soon after the formation of the People's Republic of China.
After officially supporting Mao Zedong in his Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, Deng became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and ran the country's daily affairs with then President Liu Shaoqi. Amid growing disenchantment with Mao's Great Leap Forward, Deng and Liu gained influence within the CCP. Deng and Liu advocated more pragmatic policies, as opposed to Mao's radicalist ideas
Mao grew apprehensive that the prestige Deng and Liu gained from these efforts could lead to himself being reduced to a mere figurehead. For this amongst other reasons, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, during which Deng fell out of favor and was forced to retire from all his offices. While there Deng spent his spare time writing.
When Premier Zhou Enlai fell ill from cancer, Deng became Zhou's choice for a successor, and Zhou was able to convince Mao to bring Deng Xiaoping back into politics in 1974 as First Deputy Premier, in practice running daily affairs. The Gang saw Deng as their greatest challenge to success. After Zhou's death in January 1976, Deng lost firm support in the party, and after delivering Zhou's official eulogy at the state funeral, was purged once again at the instigation of the Gang of Four, though the decision of the Politburo to relieve him of all his posts was unanimous.
Reemergence of Deng
Deng gradually emerged as the de-facto leader of China in the few years following Mao's death in 1976. By carefully mobilizing his supporters within the Chinese Communist Party, Deng was able to outmaneuver Mao's anointed successor Hua Guofeng, who had previously pardoned him, and then oust Hua from his top leadership positions by 1980-1981.
In contrast to previous leadership changes, Deng allowed Hua to retain membership in the Central Committee until November 2002, to quietly retire, and helped to set a precedent that losing a high-level leadership struggle would not result in physical harm.
Deng then repudiated the Cultural Revolution and launched the "Beijing Spring," which allowed open criticism of the excesses and suffering that had occurred during the period.
Deng gradually outmaneuvered his political opponents. Deng also received a great deal of popular support.
As Deng gradually consolidated control over the CCP, Hua was replaced by Zhao Ziyang as premier in 1980, and by Hu Yaobang as party chief in 1981. Deng remained the most influential CCP cadre, although after 1987 his only official posts were as chairman of the state and Communist Party Central Military Commissions.
Opening up
Under Deng's direction, relations with the West improved markedly. Deng traveled abroad and had a series of amicable meetings with western leaders, traveling to the United States in 1979 to meet President Carter at the White House shortly after the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with the Republic of China and established them with the PRC. Deng used Japan as an example of a rapidly progressing economic power that sets a good example for China's future economic directions. With the end of the 99-year lease on the New Territories expiring, Deng agreed that the PRC would not interfere with Hong Kong's capitalist system for 50 years.
Deng, however, did little to improve relations with the Soviet Union, continuing to adhere to the Maoist line of the Sino-Soviet Split era that the Soviet Union was a superpower equally as "hegemonist" as the United States, but even more threatening to China because of its geographical proximity.
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics"
The goals of Deng's reforms were summed up by the Four Modernizations, those of agriculture, industry, science and technology and the military.
Deng argued that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that the duty of the party was to perfect "socialism with Chinese characteristics." Downgrading communitarian values but not necessarily Marxism-Leninism, Deng emphasized that socialism does not mean shared poverty.
Unlike Hua Guofeng, Deng believed that no policy should be rejected out of hand simply for not having been associated with Mao, and unlike more conservative leaders such as Chen Yun, Deng did not object to policies on the grounds that they were similar to ones which were found in capitalist nations.
Although Deng provided the theoretical background and the political support to allow economic reform to occur, few of the economic reforms that Deng introduced were originated by Deng himself. The bottom-up approach of the Deng reforms, in contrast to the top-down approach of perestroika, was likely a key factor in the success of the former.
Deng's reforms actually included the introduction of planned, centralized management of the macro-economy by technically proficient bureaucrats, abandoning Mao's mass campaign style of economic construction.
Deng sustained Mao's legacy to the extent that he stressed the primacy of agricultural output and encouraged a significant decentralization of decision making in the rural economy teams and individual peasant households. Thus, Deng's reforms shifted China's development strategy to an emphasis on light industry and export-led growth. One of the first items of the Deng reforms was to prevent reallocation of profits except through taxation or through the banking system; In short, Deng's reforms sparked an industrial revolution in China.
Deng attracted foreign companies to a series of Special Economic Zones, where foreign investment and market liberalization were encouraged.
There are some parallels between Deng's market socialism especially in the early stages, and Lenin's New Economic Policy as well as those of Bukharin's economic policies, in that both foresaw a role for private entrepreneurs and markets based on trade and pricing rather than central planning.
An interesting anecdote on this note is the first meeting between Deng and Armand Hammer. Deng pressed the industrialist and former investor in Lenin's Soviet Union for as much information on the NEP as possible. Hu was widely seen as a liberal-minded person and was forced to resign from his position by Deng Xiaoping, an unfair treatment in many people's view, especially among intellectuals. Deng Xiaoping, along with other hardliners, especially Li Peng, were generally blamed for the events. Critics accused Deng of suppressing any signs of political freedom that would undermine the direction of his economic reforms. Deng's involvement in the events proved that he still possessed certain dictatorial powers. Deng and subsequent governments continue to justify crackdown on protests as a measure to enforce social stability for effective economic progress.
For years after the crackdown, opponents of Deng, centered mainly around college campuses, would anonymously burn and smash little glass bottles as a gesture of contempt toward him, especially on the crackdown anniversary. (The word for little bottle sounds exactly like Xiaoping (小瓶) in Chinese.)
After resignation
Officially, Deng decided to retire from top positions when he stepped down as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1989, and retired from the political scene in 1992. China, however, was still in the era of Deng Xiaoping. Hu Jintao, Deng's hand-picked man, was then the leader of the fourth generation of the PRC leadership. Deng was recognized officially as "The architect of China's economic reforms and China's socialist modernization".
In the spring of 1992, Deng went on a southern tour of China, visiting Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai, making various speeches.
Death and reaction
Deng Xiaoping died on February 19, 1997, at age 92 from a lung infection and Parkinson's disease, but his influence continued. Even though Jiang Zemin was in firm control, government policies still followed Deng's ideas, thoughts, methods, and direction. The Central Government called Deng the "Great Marxist, Great Proletarian Revolutionary, statesman, militarist, diplomat; the founder of Deng Xiaoping theory".
The death of Deng was followed by the largest state funeral for any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong himself. During the nationally televised funeral of Deng that was broadcast on all cable channels, Jiang Zemin's emotional eulogy to the late reformist leader declared, "The Chinese people love Comrade Deng Xiaoping, thank Comrade Deng Xiaoping, mourn for Comrade Deng Xiaoping, and cherish the memory of Comrade Deng Xiaoping because he devoted his life-long energies to the Chinese people, performed immortal feats for the independence and liberation of the Chinese nation." Jiang vowed to continue Deng's policies. After the funeral, Deng was cremated and his ashes were subsequently scattered at sea, according to his wishes. For around two weeks, China's media ran news stories and documentaries related to Deng's life and death, with the regular Continual News program in the evening lasting almost two hours over the regular broadcast time.
Domestically, however, the reaction to Deng's death was not as emotional as the Chinese media had portrayed, because many segments of the Chinese population, notably the modern Maoists and radical reformers, had negative views on Deng. In the year that followed, songs like "Story of the Spring" by Dong Wenhua, which were created in Deng's honour shortly after Deng's Southern Tour in 1992, once again were widely played.
There was a significant amount of international reaction to Deng's death. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Deng was to be remembered "in the international community at large as a primary architect of China's modernization and dramatic economic development". French President Jacques Chirac said "In the course of this century, few men have, as much as Deng Xiaoping, led a vast human community through such profound and determining changes"; British Prime Minister John Major commented about Deng's key role in the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control.
Memorials
When compared to the memorials of other former CCP leaders, those dedicated to Deng have been relatively low profile, in keeping with Deng's pragmatism.
A bronze statue of Deng was erected on November 14, 2000, at the grand plaza of Lianhua Mountain Park (莲花山公园) of Shenzhen. This statue is dedicated to Deng's role as a great planner and contributor to the development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, starting in 1984. The statue shows Deng striding forward confidently.
Another bronze statue of Deng was dedicated August 13, 2004 in the city of Guang'an, Deng's home town, in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The statue was erected to commemorate Deng's 100th birthday. The statue shows Deng, dressed casually, sitting on a chair and smiling. The Chinese characters for "Statue of Deng Xiaoping” are inscribed on the pedestal.
In Bishkek, capital of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, there is a 6-lane boulevard, 25 meters wide and 3.5 km long, Deng Xiaoping Prospekt, which was dedicated on June 18, 1997. The epigraph in memory of Deng is written in Chinese, Russian and Kirghiz .
Trivia
Based on the Chinese government's own admission, Deng Xiaoping is the senior Chinese leader who had experienced most numerous assassination attempts. According to the recent declassified information after Hu Jintao came to power, there were seven attempts on Deng's life from 1960's to 1980's and most of the cases remain unsolved, and all of them rooted by the Maoists' opposition to Deng's reform:
1. On December 21, 1969, Deng Xiaoping was exiled to an abandoned infantry school at a place named Wangcheng Hill in Xinjian County of Jiangxi province for his house arrest under the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee's executive order #1. However, the militia mistook the guards' residence for that of Deng and many of them were killed when the guards returned fire. On February 21, 1973, an Ilyushin Il-14 was sent from Beijing to Jiangxi to take Deng Xiaoping back to Beijing to resume his work, but on the same day, an urgent order from Beijing instructed Deng to take train instead, with additional protection of a squad personally led by the chief-of-staff of the local military district. It was reported that this change of plan was conducted by Zhou Enlai to protect Deng, and the Ilyushin Il-14 Deng originally planned to take exploded above Anhui on its way back. In September 1975, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Qing, and Hua Guofeng went to Shanxi, and one evening, when Deng was taking his daily walk, a shadow opened fire on Deng and missed. In April 1976, Deng Xiaoping was once again removed from his post and was exiled to a military reception center at Yuquan Mountain in the suburb of Beijing for yet another house arrest. The same evening Deng had arrived, the Number 5 building where Deng resided was caught on fire and later investigation revealed that the fire started on the first floor, the exact floor where Deng resided, and stopped exactly after every room in the first floor was burned. Deng Xiaoping was ordered by his guards assigned by Ye Jianying to go somewhere else to study Mao's work and thus was not in the building when the fire struck, and after the incident, he was immediately moved back in to the city. In March 1980, Deng Xiaoping went to inspect troops in Jinan military region. As Deng was returning to the conference room from outside, one of the local guards shouted:'Down the capitalist Deng Xiaoping! Revenge for the vice-chairman Jiang Qing!' and opened fire on Deng at the same time. Thanks to Deng's body guards' quick reaction, Deng was not harmed and the assassin was quickly subdued. In February 1988, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, and Yang Shangkun went to Shanghai for the Chinese New Year, and resided in the Western Suburb Hotel. From these Maoists, maps of Deng's residence, pistols with silencers, explosives, and incendiaries were found.
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