Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping the Chinese revolutionary, statesman and principal architect of the reform and opening policy (1904-1997) who, after the death of Mao Zedong, redirected China toward market-oriented economic development and presided over the most rapid period of growth in the country's modern history. Though he never held the highest formal offices after 1990, he was the paramount leader of China for nearly two decades.

Early Life and Revolutionary Career

Deng Xiaoping was born on 22 August 1904 in Guang'an county, Sichuan province. As a teenager he travelled to France under a work-study programme, where he worked in factories and became involved in the Chinese communist movement among the emigres of Europe. He then spent time in the Soviet Union before returning to China in the mid-1920s to take part in the revolutionary struggle.

During the 1930s and 1940s he served in the Red Army and in the party's political apparatus, holding command and political positions during the Long March and the war against Japan. He was a senior political commissar in the great campaigns of the civil war, and his reputation for decisiveness and for attention to practical detail grew steadily within the leadership.

After 1949 he held a series of important posts in the south-west and then in Beijing, where he became a vice-premier and a member of the party's highest bodies. He was associated with the management of the economy and with the organisation of the party, and his administrative skills made him one of the most effective figures of the early People's Republic.

Political Exile and Return

Deng's pragmatic outlook brought him into conflict with the radical currents of the 1960s. During the Cultural Revolution he was denounced as a capitalist roader, stripped of his posts and sent to work in a tractor factory in Jiangxi province. His son was crippled during the persecution of the period, and the family suffered years of hardship and separation.

He was restored to office in 1973 and given responsibility for the government while Zhou Enlai was ill, but he was purged again in 1976 during a fresh campaign against his policies. After Mao's death and the fall of the radical faction that same year, he returned once more, and by 1978 he had emerged as the dominant figure in the leadership and had begun to set the country on a new course.

His two rehabilitations and two falls made him a symbol of the political turbulence of the era, and his survival gave him an authority that few of his colleagues could match. He used that authority to dismantle the more extreme policies of the recent past and to restore a measure of order and predictability to the conduct of public affairs.

Reform and Opening

At the third plenary session of the eleventh party congress in December 1978, the leadership adopted a programme of reform and opening associated above all with Deng. The new policy shifted the priority of the state from class struggle to economic construction, and it set in motion changes in agriculture, industry and foreign relations that transformed the Chinese economy.

In the countryside, the commune system was replaced by a household responsibility system that allowed peasant families to farm land on contract and to sell surpluses in the market. In the cities, special economic zones were established to attract foreign investment and technology, and private and collective enterprises were permitted to flourish alongside state industry. Foreign trade and investment grew rapidly.

The reforms produced sustained growth of a scale unmatched in modern history, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and turning China into a major manufacturing economy. Deng summarised the approach with the maxim that it does not matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice, and with his call for the country to seek truth from facts.

Political Thought and the 1980s

Deng insisted that economic reform must be accompanied by the maintenance of party leadership and by political stability. He warned against both the wholesale adoption of foreign political models and the dogmatic repetition of obsolete doctrine, and he set out the four cardinal principles that defined the limits of permissible change. His doctrine became known as Deng Xiaoping Theory.

In the late 1980s he faced serious challenges, including student demonstrations and a deep debate within the leadership about the pace and direction of reform. He retired from his formal posts in the early 1990s but continued to exercise decisive influence, and his famous southern tour of 1992 reaffirmed the commitment to market reform at a moment when the programme appeared to be stalling.

He also played a central role in foreign affairs, normalising relations with the United States in 1979, negotiating the return of Hong Kong in 1984 and managing the country's emergence as a participant in the global economy. His visit to the United States and his meetings with foreign leaders helped to end China's long isolation.

Death and Legacy

Deng Xiaoping died in Beijing on 19 February 1997 at the age of ninety-two, and his passing marked the end of an era in the leadership of the People's Republic. He had already retired from active office, and the transition to the next generation of leaders had been arranged in an orderly fashion, which was itself a break with the abrupt successions of the past.

His legacy is identified with the transformation of China from a poor, closed and agrarian country into the world's second largest economy. His policies reshaped the lives of hundreds of millions and altered the balance of the global economy, and his emphasis on pragmatism and development became the guiding principle of Chinese policy for decades.

Debate continues over the political and social costs of the reforms and over the limits he placed on political change. Yet he is generally regarded, alongside Mao Zedong, as one of the two decisive figures in the making of modern China, and the policy of reform and opening that he initiated remains the foundation of the country's economic strategy.

See also

• Reform and opening up
• Special economic zones
• Deng Xiaoping Theory
• Household responsibility system