Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) was a Chinese revolutionary, military political commissar, and statesman who became the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. He never held the top formal posts of head of state, head of government, or Party general secretary for most of his career in power, yet he shaped national policy from the late 1970s until the early 1990s. He is widely regarded as the architect of "reform and opening up," a program that moved China from a centrally planned system toward a market-oriented economy while the Communist Party kept political control. His approach combined pragmatism with a commitment to Party rule, and his decisions reshaped China's relations with the world and produced one of the fastest sustained rates of economic growth in modern history.

Deng's career spanned the Chinese Revolution, the early years of the People's Republic, the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, and the reconstruction that followed. After being purged twice, he returned to leadership in 1977 and used the Third Plenum of December 1978 to shift the Party's priorities from class struggle to economic construction. The subsequent decades saw rural decollectivization, the creation of special economic zones, the opening of foreign trade and investment, and the normalization of relations with the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union, along with the return of Hong Kong and Macau under the "one country, two systems" framework. His tenure also included the 1989 suppression of the Tiananmen protests, which remains the most debated episode of his career.

This entry covers his early life and revolutionary service, his years in the Party and state leadership under Mao, his rehabilitation and rise to power, the economic, political, and foreign-policy reforms of the 1980s, the 1989 crisis and its aftermath, his 1992 Southern Tour and final years, and the doctrine, family, and historiographical debates that surround his legacy.

Early life and study abroad

Deng Xiaoping was born in 1904 in Paifang village, Xiexing township, Guang'an County, Sichuan. His family belonged to the Hakka people, and its ancestors can be traced to Mei County in Guangdong, having been settled in Sichuan for several generations. Biographies generally describe the household as a wealthy landlord family. That standing gave him access to schooling beyond the local level. At fifteen he was sent to a preparatory school in Chongqing, where students were prepared for the work-study program in France.

The scheme, known as the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement, sent young Chinese to Europe to combine factory work with study. Deng sailed with about eighty schoolmates, travelling steerage, and arrived in Marseilles in October 1920. The reality in France was harsher than expected. The country was in a deep postwar recession, with few opportunities for a student to support himself with part-time work. He worked at the Le Creusot iron and steel plant, later as a fitter at the Renault factory near Paris, and in other jobs such as locomotive fireman and kitchen helper. Because he could not pay tuition, his formal study ended after less than half a year, and he did not enroll in any schools for formal study for the rest of his time in France.

It was in this environment that his political views formed. Under the influence of seniors such as Zhao Shiyan and Zhou Enlai, he began to study Marxism and to do political propaganda work. Sources differ on the exact year he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe, placing it in 1921 or 1922. At a July 1924 meeting, the members of the league's executive committee, Deng among them, automatically became members of the Chinese Communist Party under a decision of the Party. His early Party career was therefore built inside the European branch of the youth movement rather than in China.

Deng then went to the Soviet Union. He enrolled at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, where he began formal study of Marxism and Leninism. Accounts differ on the departure date, with some placing it in early 1926 and others in the summer of that year. The institution was a training camp for Chinese revolutionaries from both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party, split off from the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. Students there also received both political and military training. Because the school brought future rivals from both parties into the same classrooms, the Moscow years placed Deng among people who would later compete with him for influence.

Training at a Comintern-linked school also exposed him to the organizational model of Leninist parties. This background is commonly read as the source of his later insistence on Party discipline, although the link is an interpretation rather than a documented statement of his own. In March 1927 he arrived in Xi'an, in northwest China, from Moscow, and his first assignment there was political work in a Nationalist army. The timing mattered: his return coincided with the breakdown of the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and he adopted the name Deng Xiaoping around that time.

Revolutionary and military service, 1927–1949

Guangxi and the early Red base areas

From 1929 to 1931 Deng served as the Central Committee's chief representative in Guangxi, where he helped lead the Baise and Longzhou uprisings. From 1929 to 1931, Deng served as the chief representative of the Central Committee in Guangxi, where he helped lead the Baise and Longzhou Uprisings. The Longzhou Uprising began in early February 1930 and established the Zuo River Soviet in eight counties of southwest Guangxi. Its forces were defeated within months, and the survivors joined the You River Soviet.

The Guangxi campaign was followed by a sharp rebuke. Deng had followed the Li Lisan line, which called for direct assaults on cities, and the rural soviet in Guangxi was abandoned and the Seventh Red Army under Deng's political leadership fought and lost several bloody battles. After the retreat to Jiangxi, a Central Committee post-mortem in 1931 singled out Deng's behavior as an example of "rightist opportunism and a rich peasant line". He was then posted to the Jiangxi Soviet, where he headed the party in Ruijin county and learned how Mao Zedong was building a rural base. Later he was put in charge of propaganda for the whole soviet area.

Jiangxi, the Long March and Zunyi

Deng's work in Jiangxi gave him a practical grounding in mobilization, and it preceded the Long March (1934–1935). 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. He attended the Zunyi Conference at the start of the march, where Mao began to emerge as leader. During the Zunyi Conference at the beginning of the Long March, the so-called 28 Bolsheviks, led by Bo Gu and Wang Ming, were ousted from power and Mao Zedong, to the dismay of the Soviet Union, became the new leader of the Chinese Communist Party. Deng's close association with Mao dates from this period. Not long after Mao set up his base in northwest China, Mao entrusted Deng with major responsibilities as a political commissar, providing political leadership within the military.

The war against Japan: Taihang, Taiyue and Liu Bocheng

When the war with Japan began in 1937, Deng was assigned to the Communist forces in the north. 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. In the Taihang Mountains his responsibilities extended from a single county to leading the work of several counties in the Taihang Mountains as political commissar in World War II.

The partnership with Liu Bocheng became the core of Deng's military career. In August 1945, the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Military Region and its field army were established, primarily reorganized from the Eighth Route Army's 129th Division. Liu Bocheng served as the Military Region Commander, Deng Xiaoping as the Political Commissar, and Li Da as the Chief of Staff. The region combined the Taiyue and Taihang military regions with others. In the autumn 1945 Shangdang campaign, Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping promptly changed their strategy from decimating the nationalist force to retaking lost territory, and in the following weeks they intercepted a retreating Nationalist column. In 1946 the same pair led operations along the Longhai Railway and at Dingtao, which overran the enemy base in southwestern Shandong in the view of the Communist command.

The Huaihai campaign and the advance into the southwest

The Huaihai campaign, fought from November 1948 to January 1949, was Deng's main operation as political commissar. The council quickly approved this plan and ordered the Central Plains Field Army under Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping (Political Commissar of the Central Plains Field Army) to assault the Nationalist garrison in Henan and Anhui to breakthrough to Shandong. Within the campaign's General Front Committee, Liu, Chen, and Deng formed the committee's standing committee with Deng serving as secretary. Commentators have noted the value of the pairing: Liu and Deng had been working together for more than 10 years.

After the campaign, the army was reorganized. In February 1949, it was reorganized into the Second Field Army, taking part in the Yangtze River Crossing Campaign and the Liberation of the Southwest. Deng remained its political commissar in the final phase of the civil war, where he was instrumental in the PLA's march into Tibet. These responsibilities carried over into his postwar assignments in the southwest, described in the next section.

Early People's Republic leadership, 1949–1966

Deng's first major post after the founding of the state was in the southwest. On 1 October 1949, Deng attended the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. He then took charge of the region's pacification as first secretary of the Department of the Southwest. The bureau's job was managing the final takeover of that part of the country still held by the Kuomintang; Tibet remained independent for another year. Its work covered more than security. In 1951, Deng's report on agrarian reform in the region set out how land struggles were meant to weaken the landlord class while giving poor peasants material gains and new leadership roles in peasant associations (one aim is to further weaken the feudal forces, and the other is to make sure the poor peasants and farm labourers receive appropriate economic benefit).

Tibet became the most consequential of these tasks. In January 1950, Mao Zedong, who was still visiting the Soviet Union, telephoned the CCP Southwest Bureau requesting the formation of a leading organ for operating Tibet. Deng and Mao's other lieutenants in the region then recommended Zhang Guohua, Commander of the 18th Army, and Tan Guansan, Political Commissar of the 18th Army. With Mao's approval, the 18th Army took charge of the Battle of Chamdo, which was successfully led by Zhang Guohua and Tan Guansan in October 1950. Deng's own 1950 remarks on Tibetan and other minority areas repeated Mao's guidance that introducing regional national autonomy and not relying on local grain supplies were the two basic principles. Political control was formalised in 1951, when Tibet was incorporated into the People's Republic through an agreement, and Deng remained personally involved in Tibet policy for years afterwards, a role that later commentators have argued limited his flexibility on the issue. For this period, see Tibet.

In 1952 Deng moved to the centre. In July 1952, Deng was transferred to work in the central government, serving first as vice premier of the Administrative Council of the Central People's Government (the State Council since 1954) and vice minister of the Financial and Economic Commission, and then as director of the Transportation Office of the Administrative Council and Minister of Finance. The Government Administration Council was the "highest executive body of state affairs" of the central government in its early years, so Deng's posts placed him in the executive core of the new government. He succeeded Bo Yibo as minister of finance, and his finance portfolio fed into the early fiscal and state-building tasks of the decade, including budgeting, transport planning and the transition from the council to the State Council in 1954. Li Xiannian's later tenure as minister of finance shows that the portfolio passed to others once Deng's Party duties expanded.

Deng's Party career advanced even faster. In 1954, he was promoted, in succession, to the posts of secretary general of the CPC Central Committee, minister of organization of the CPC Central Committee, vice premier of the State Council, and vice chairman of the Defense Commission. At the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventh Party Congress in April 1955, he was elected into the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee. At the Eighth National Congress in September 1956, Deng Xiaoping delivered the report on the revision of the CPC Constitution. He then became the leading figure in the Party machinery: on September 28, 1956, at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping was elected as General Secretary of the Central Committee. Deng, as the only leader to sit on both the Politburo Standing Committee and the Secretariat, was the link between policy decision-making. In the Party's own description, his role was to manage the day-to-day work of the Central Committee while participating in policy decisions. He also argued that collective leadership should guard against individuals acting arbitrarily and making decisions on important issues alone.

The period ended with political campaigns that tested the Party's cohesion. In 1957 Deng took part in the Anti-Rightist Campaign, which followed a brief opening to public criticism of the Party and then turned against many of its critics. Among those affected was a member of the Government Administration Council from 1949 to 1954, Zhang Naiqi, who was classified as a rightist in 1957 and removed from his posts and persecuted in June of that year. Deng's role within the central leadership during these years was that of a senior administrator in the Party apparatus, and the campaign's pressures and the expanding power of the Party's general secretary set the context for his later disputes with Mao and the economic debates that followed the Great Leap Forward.

Adjustment after the Great Leap Forward, 1959–1962

Economic management shifted toward the Party's pragmatic wing around 1960, after the Great Leap Forward's collapse. Mao stepped down as State Chairman of the PRC in 1959, predicting he would take most of the blame for the failure of the Great Leap Forward, though he did retain his position as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Liu Shaoqi (the new PRC Chairman) and Deng Xiaoping (CCP General Secretary) were left in charge to execute measures to achieve economic recovery. Deng's authority in these years rested on his post as head of the Party Secretariat, from which he oversaw day-to-day administration with Liu.

The recovery programme that Liu and Deng carried out broke up the communes, ended the use of communal dormitories and mess halls, and reintroduced rural markets and private subsidiary farming plots, along with greater wage differentials and the idea of allowing individuals to do piece work. Historians often describe the output gains as substantial; one account states that grain production increased by 4 million tons by 1961, and by 12.5 million tons in 1962. The January–February 1962 Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, attended by 7,118 officials from the central government down to the county level, was the forum at which the scale of the disaster was officially reviewed. There, Liu attributed the famine to human error, stating that the economic disaster was 30 percent fault of nature, 70 percent human error.

Deng's most widely known contribution to this debate was his defence of household-based production. In mid-1962, Deng Xiaoping expressed his support for the "household contract responsibility system" of the Three Freedoms and One Guarantee. In an article of 7 July 1962 titled "How to Recover Agricultural Production", he used a Sichuan proverb about cats, adding that in order to recover agricultural production now, we need to adapt to different situations instead of adhering to one fixed pattern in the relations of production. The sources differ on the first use of the phrase: one biography reportedly dates the first mention to a 1962 talk with Communist Youth League delegates, and says the first mention of the saying was in 1962 when he spoke to Communist Youth League delegates. Whatever the exact occasion, the formulation became shorthand for judging policy by results rather than doctrine. Its later use against him is recorded in the sources: during the Cultural Revolution, the cat theory became one of Deng's "crimes".

These policies provoked conflict with Mao. In the summer of 1962, at the swimming pool in Zhongnanhai, Beijing, Mao and Liu Shaoqi had their first direct conflict. According to accounts of the exchange, Mao complained that the Three Red Banners had been refuted and land was being divided up, and that Liu had done nothing about it. Mao's concern was that the reforms were a retreat from collective socialism. Together with Deng Xiaoping, Liu implemented pragmatic recovery policies — including the partial restoration of private plots and rural markets — that stabilised the economy but deepened Mao's suspicion that they were "taking the capitalist road." Mao's own response was partly to step back, but the divide between him and his colleagues widened. In its aftermath, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping took charge of economic recovery while Mao receded toward the party's "second line" — an arrangement Mao would move to reverse within a few years.

The consequences for Deng's standing were significant. Mao feared that the reformist economic policies of Deng and Liu could lead to restoration of capitalism and end the Chinese Revolution. By the time the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Deng had been labelled a major target: Deng was identified as the 'Number Two Capitalist Roader' in China, second only to President Liu Shaoqi. His earlier prominence in the recovery effort, which had made him a leading figure in the Party, thus became the basis for the charges that ended his career in office.

Cultural Revolution purges and rustication, 1966–1973

When Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Deng was branded the Party's second-ranking "capitalist roader," after Liu Shaoqi. He first tried to defuse the attacks by admitting at a public meeting in Beijing that he had taken a "bourgeois line," and by attributing his errors to a long-established way of thinking and style of work. The radicals did not accept this. In 1967 Jiang Qing publicly denounced him, and he was dismissed from his Party and government offices. He then endured public struggle sessions in which he was humiliated, denounced, and forced to bow before crowds, while the Red Guards ransacked the family home in Beijing and harassed his children.

Deng's treatment was less severe than Liu's. Liu died in custody in 1969 after being denied medical care, whereas Deng survived partly because Mao may have wanted to keep a capable administrator in reserve, and partly because Zhou Enlai shielded him. In October 1969 Deng, his wife Zhuo Lin, his stepmother and his injured son were sent under guard to Xinjian County in Jiangxi Province. There he worked as an ordinary fitter at a tractor repair plant, operating lathes and repairing machinery, while living in a modest brick house and being barred from outside correspondence. Several biographers and memoirists argue that these years hardened his view that ideological fanaticism was damaging China and that practical economic development was the remedy, though such assessments rely largely on later accounts by associates.

The most serious personal blow fell on his eldest son, Deng Pufang, a physics student at Peking University. In 1968 Red Guards detained him and interrogated him in a fourth-floor room. He fell from a window, and it remains disputed whether he was pushed or jumped in an attempt to escape torture. He broke his spine and became permanently paraplegic. Because the family was politically disgraced, he received no adequate treatment, and specialists examined him only in 1974. After Deng returned to power, Pufang turned his experience into disability advocacy. He set up a welfare fund for the disabled in 1984, and in 1988 he helped found the China Disabled Persons' Federation, which became the most prominent institution in the field. The sources differ on the precise chronology of these bodies, so the dates above should be read as approximate.

Deng's rehabilitation came through a process in which Zhou Enlai, who was seriously ill with cancer, pushed to restore moderate officials. Most accounts date Deng's return to 1973, when he was reinstated as vice premier, with the approval of Mao. Some sources place the appointment in early 1974, and a biography by Gao Wenqian argues that Mao used the move to counterbalance Zhou's growing influence after the Lin Biao affair of 1971. In August 1973 the Tenth Party Congress readmitted Deng to the Central Committee, though not to the Politburo. His return to office therefore restored his influence in government work without yet giving him a place in the top leadership. The rehabilitation set up the conflict with the Gang of Four that followed in 1975–1976.

Return to office and the Tiananmen Incident of 1976

Renewed authority in 1975

With Mao Zedong's premier Zhou Enlai withdrawing from daily politics because of illness, Deng took on the running of the state council, the party apparatus, and the armed forces, while also becoming army chief of staff. After Zhou withdrew from active politics in January 1975, Deng was effectively put in charge of the government, party, and military. Mao's reasons were partly strategic: he reportedly wanted Deng as a counterweight to the military faction and no longer trusted the radicals around his wife, Jiang Qing. Mao wanted to use Deng as a counterweight to the military faction in government to suppress former Lin loyalists. In addition, Mao had also lost confidence in the Gang of Four and saw Deng as the alternative.

Deng used this position to streamline railways, steel production and other sectors. Much like the post-Great Leap restructuring led by Liu Shaoqi, Deng streamlined the railway system, steel production, etc. The radicals attacked these measures; they criticized several 1975 policy documents, including a general programme for party and state work and an outline report on science and technology. They were particularly unreasonable when they criticized the so-called "three poisonous weeds". By late 1975 Mao himself launched a campaign against "rehabilitating the case for the rightists", an implicit target that was aimed at Deng.

Zhou's death and the April 1976 crisis

Zhou died on 8 January 1976. The radicals moved to block the appointment of Deng (Zhou's heir apparent) as premier, with Mao resolving the impasse by appointing Hua Guofeng, a veteran party official and government administrator, as acting premier. Other accounts describe Deng as having been named acting premier before the Gang of Four turned on him, so the exact sequence of these appointments is contested. The Gang of Four began using their newspapers to criticize Deng and to mobilize their urban militia groups.

In the spring, citizens began laying wreaths at the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square. In late March people started leaving wreaths there commemorating Zhou, first in ones and twos, and then in hundreds. Deng had delivered the eulogy at Zhou's funeral. Gatherings on 4–5 April, which coincided with the Qingming Festival, grew large; estimates of participants range from 100,000 in one reference work to two hundred thousand people in another. When the crowd refused to disperse, a mob smashed several vehicles and burned a police command post. At night, militia and public security forces, under the control of Hua Guofeng, cleared the square. Accounts of those detained also differ, with thousands arrested or investigated in the aftermath according to one source.

The leadership then condemned the events. The following morning, the Party Political Bureau declared the incident to be "counterrevolutionary" and removed Deng Xiaoping from all offices as its ultimate instigator. Deng was not present at the square, and he instructed his children to avoid being seen at the square. He was accused of planning the event, while he insisted that he was nearby only for a haircut. The later reversal of this verdict became central to the 1977 power struggle. Deng pressed relentlessly for a reversal of the Party's verdict, arguing that the demonstration in fact had been "revolutionary."

Mao's death, the arrest of the Gang of Four, and Hua's rise

On September 9, Chairman Mao died. For several weeks afterwards the radicals still retained control over the government media, and many articles appeared on the theme of "principles laid down" (or "established") by Mao. The radicals' position then collapsed. In October, less than a month after Mao's death, Jiang Qing and her three principal associates, denounced as the Gang of Four, were arrested with the assistance of two senior Political Bureau members, Minister of National Defense Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, commander of the CCP's elite bodyguard. Accounts give the arrest date as on the 6th or 7 October. Hua then became party chairman and was promoted as Mao's chosen successor. He was billed as being Mao's personally appointed successor, but his own position remained dependent on the non-radical left, and Ye Jianying moved his support to Deng. Ye Jianying deserted Wang Dongxing and Hua Guofeng, his former coconspirators, throwing his support to Deng Xiaoping.

Gradual return, 1977

Deng's rehabilitation followed the defeat of the radicals but was not immediate. Along with other party elders, they rehabilitated Deng and brought him back to Beijing. The post-Mao political order was given its first vote of confidence at the Eleventh National Party Congress, held August 12- 18, 1977. Hua was confirmed as party chairman, and Ye Jianying, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, and Wang Dongxing were elected vice chairmen. The Gang itself was removed from the party in July 1977. Two years after the April events, the central government reassessed that day and declared those protests a "revolutionary movement." Deng's further consolidation of power at the end of the decade is discussed in the following sections.

Consolidation of power and the Third Plenum, 1977–1978

Deng's rehabilitation in July 1977 did not immediately give him control of the leadership. Hua Guofeng, who had helped arrest the Gang of Four, remained the Party's top figure and presided over a doctrine that tied policy to Mao's own pronouncements. The contest over that doctrine became the central political fight of 1978. Known as the 1978 Truth Criterion Controversy, it mainly revolved around Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers" and Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up.

The dispute opened with a newspaper article. On 11 May 1978, Guangming Daily published a front-page editorial, titled "Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth," criticizing the "Two Whatevers". The essay was written by Hu Fuming, a philosophy scholar. Its argument, that practice rather than doctrinal authority should verify ideas, drew on epistemological principles that Marxist theorists had long accepted in the abstract. Historians disagree about how sharply the leadership was divided. One study argues that the conflict was largely among lower-level figures on the theoretical front who did not deeply engage the top leadership. Even so, Deng quickly took up the line. In June 1978, Deng endorsed the perspective of the editorial at an All-Army Political Work Conference.

The argument then moved into a central work conference in the autumn of 1978, which Hua's closing speech describes as having been in session for 34 days. Deng's speech there pressed the case that only by "emancipating the minds" of the Chinese people from the rigid ideology of the previous era and adhering to the more pragmatic principle of "seeking truth from facts" could China achieve socialist modernization. Hua did not reject the policy shift itself. At the November 1978 work conference, he did not oppose changing the party's "key link" from "class struggle" to economics. Hua did, however, offer a self-criticism over the "Two Whatevers" wording, which was widely read as an attack on reformers. Historians have differed on whether this reflected principled dogmatism or clumsy phrasing by his advisers.

The Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee, held in December 1978, marked the decisive turn. Its main results were the adoption of economic construction as the Party's priority and a decisive shift in the balance of authority. At the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, Deng effectively took control of the party by consolidating his power and marginalizing Hua, who was unofficially replaced by Deng as China's paramount leader in the session. The arrangement was informal. Deng never held the title of general secretary or chairman in this period, and Hua kept formal positions for several more years, until the Party leadership was reorganized in 1980–1981.

The Four Modernizations

The program that anchored the plenum's economic agenda was the Four Modernizations, covering agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense. The idea predated Deng. The concept of the Four Modernizations was first introduced by Zhou Enlai in 1963 and later emphasized during the 1978 National Congress of the Communist Party of China. The Four Modernizations were included in the 1978 constitution of the PRC.

Deng's contribution was to make the program the organizing goal of the state. Its significance lay in its sequencing. Modernization of the economy was placed above ideological campaigns, and the Party's mobilizing energy shifted from class struggle toward production and external engagement. In 1979 Deng and his colleagues reaffirmed the program and tied it to a pragmatic, market-oriented approach that would later be expanded in the rural and urban reforms. The Four Modernizations thus became the practical framework within which the post-Mao leadership pursued the policy changes described in the following sections, and they distinguished Deng's program from the mass campaigns associated with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.

Rural and urban economic reform, 1978–1984

The first phase of reform began in the countryside and was driven partly by local initiative. In 1978, after drought and food shortages, eighteen households in Xiaogang village in Fengyang county, Anhui, secretly agreed to divide collectively worked land among families. Each household would deliver a fixed grain quota to the state and the collective and keep the rest. Central leaders were divided on whether to allow such arrangements. Deng Xiaoping's endorsement in May 1980 helped move the policy forward, and a 1982 central document classified the household contract as part of the socialist collective economy. By 1984 the household responsibility system had become the dominant form of rural organization, and the people's commune, which had combined administration and production, was dismantled. Households became the basic units of production, responsible for their own profits and losses.

Pricing reform followed a different logic. Before 1978 most prices were set by the government together with output targets. Reformers judged that abolishing planning outright would cause shortages and inflation, so they chose to keep the plan and build a market alongside it. From 1981 enterprises that had met their quotas could sell surplus output at market prices, while quota output continued to sell at state prices. This was the dual-track price system, which was applied first to agriculture, then to consumer goods and finally to industrial goods. The incentive to produce beyond quota was strong, and by the mid-1980s market prices were shaping more production decisions than planning targets. The system also had costs. The gap between plan and market prices gave officials and their relatives opportunities for arbitrage and speculation. In 1984 enterprises were permitted to price above-quota production materials within a band of 20 percent around the state price. That band was removed in January 1985, and in March 1985 the State Council made the dual-track approach the basic policy of price reform.

Enterprise reform aimed to make state-owned firms respond to markets rather than to administrative orders. The experiment began in late 1978 with six pilot enterprises in Sichuan. By mid-1980, 6,600 industrial enterprises had been granted autonomy over production, marketing and investment, and together they accounted for about 45 percent of state industrial output. Firms were also allowed to keep profits after taxes, and wages were linked to performance. The state budget's share of fixed investment by state enterprises fell sharply, from about 60 percent in 1978 to roughly 14 percent in 1988. Rural reform had matured by 1984, but urban reform had only begun in pilot form. At the Third Plenum of the 12th Central Committee in October 1984, the Party adopted the Decision on Reform of the Economic Structure. The decision extended reform to the urban economy, shifted the emphasis to enterprise management and price rationalization, and set the goal of a "socialist commodity economy." Deng later praised the decision, calling it something no earlier Party leader had framed in that way.

Rural industry expanded alongside these changes. In 1984 the Party and the State Council jointly renamed the commune and brigade enterprises as township and village enterprises (TVEs). The move relaxed restrictions on collective businesses and allowed private activity outside agriculture. Local governments often founded TVEs to raise revenue, and they became a major channel for rural employment. Decollectivization also gave rural residents new options. By 1987, a farmer could legally leave the village for a nearby town to work in a small factory, run a noodle stand or repair machinery.

The reforms of 1978–1984 combined household-level incentives in agriculture, partial autonomy for state firms, a dual-track price regime and the emergence of non-state enterprises in the countryside. Together they set the pattern of gradual, experimental change that shaped the decade that followed.

Special economic zones and opening to the world

Opening to foreign capital began as a set of local experiments before it became national policy. In April 1979, Guangdong's provincial leadership proposed an export-processing zone, and Deng responded by backing a "special export zone" trial. Foreign trade rules then loosened in Guangdong and Fujian: in July 1979, Beijing gave the two provinces more authority over foreign economic dealings and permission to use flexible policies. In April 1979, on receiving the report by the leader of CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee about building a processing zone for exports in Guangdong Province, Deng Xiaoping proposed a "special export zone" pilot. In July, the central authorities decided to grant more decision-making power to Guangdong and Fujian provinces regarding foreign economic activities.

National legislation followed. The Sino-foreign Equity Joint Venture Law entered into force on July 1, 1979. For a time, the equity joint venture was the only legal route for foreign participation in Chinese enterprises. The first such venture, Beijing Air Catering, was set up only in May 1979. Implementing provisions came in 1983, and later statutes covered wholly foreign-owned enterprises and cooperative ventures in 1986 and 1988. The number of ventures grew quickly: by mid-1986 more than 6,700 equity and contractual joint ventures, along with 130 wholly foreign-owned enterprises, had been established. The legal framework was still uneven in practice, and investors often encountered unclear rules.

The special economic zones took shape in 1980. The "special export zone" label was changed to "special economic zone" in May 1980. On 26 August 1980, the NPC Standing Committee approved the regulations for the Guangdong zones and endorsed Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen. Like the other three zones, Shenzhen was modeled after Ireland's Shannon Free Zone. The zones were designed as export-oriented enclaves with their own rules. The central government granted local authorities broad economic autonomy to craft incentive structures, attract capital, and pilot regulatory innovations in areas such as labor, enterprise governance, and taxation. Investors were attracted by low taxes, cheap land, cheap labor and comparative economic freedom. Location also mattered. Shenzhen's location next to Hong Kong was especially strategic, while Xiamen's location near Taiwan made it a logical site for attracting external capital, technology, and managerial expertise. Some accounts also argue that Deng chose the far south partly because he was wary of Shanghai as a rival power base.

Results were uneven. Shenzhen, the largest and most significant of the four SEZs, delivered exceptional outcomes, with contributions to the host province of Guangdong's GDP and exports increasing exponentially within a decade. The other early zones did not match that record. One analysis reports that Zhuhai, Xiamen and Shantou grew more slowly in the early 1980s, and that their performance was less spectacular than Shenzhen's. The zone model also expanded over time: in 1988, Hainan province became the fifth SEZ.

The range of permitted foreign involvement widened during the same period. Over the early and mid-1980s, arrangements moved from processing and assembly deals toward joint ventures and, eventually, full foreign ownership. Later phases of opening pushed investment beyond the coast, with the Yangtze valley and then the interior and west drawing in capital. Over the following decades, the export-oriented zones and coastal cities became platforms through which Chinese manufacturing joined global production networks, and the reliance on export revenue and foreign capital became a defining feature of China's economic growth model.

Foreign policy, Hong Kong, and Macau

Deng's foreign policy in the late 1970s had two aims: to secure a stable external environment for domestic modernization, and to counter Soviet influence in Asia. Relations with Japan were settled first. Talks on a friendship treaty had begun in 1975 and the agreement was signed in Beijing in August 1978. It took effect on 23 October 1978, when Deng visited Japan and exchanged the instruments of ratification. The trip was the first official visit to Japan by a Chinese leader of his rank since the Second World War and Deng also used it to study Japanese experience in economic development.

Normalization with the United States followed a similar logic. The two governments announced the decision on 15 December 1978, and diplomatic relations took effect on 1 January 1979. Washington recognized the People's Republic as the sole legal government of China and withdrew recognition from Taipei As part of the agreement, the United States recognized the Government of the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, and declared it would withdraw diplomatic recognition from Taiwan. During Deng's visit to Washington in January 1979, he told President Jimmy Carter about Beijing's plan to act against Vietnam, and Carter unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade Deng from pursuing this military action. Beijing later objected to the Taiwan Relations Act, which Congress passed in April 1979 to keep commercial and cultural ties with Taiwan PRC leaders repeatedly expressed displeasure with the Taiwan Relations Act.

The 1979 war against Vietnam was the most consequential military step of this period. After Vietnamese forces toppled the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Beijing treated the action as a provocation that required a response China defined the war as "punitive," primarily as a response to Vietnam's toppling of Beijing's client state in Cambodia. A little more than one month later, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and brought down the genocidal and murderous Khmer Rouge. Deng's stated goal was to "teach Vietnam a lesson" and demonstrate that Soviet backing would not deter Beijing. Chinese forces attacked on 17 February 1979, but the campaign was deliberately limited. On 5 March Beijing announced that its objectives had been achieved and that Chinese forces would withdraw. The pull-back, completed by 16 March, was accompanied by systematic demolition of Vietnamese infrastructure. Casualty figures remain disputed, with each side suffering roughly 30,000 deaths and 35,000 wounded, although both sides have given widely different, unverified numbers of casualties. Beijing regarded the operation as a strategic success because the PRC had punished Vietnam, and Vietnam's ally, the Soviet Union, had not dared to intervene militarily. Some historians also link the war to Deng's contest with Hua Guofeng over control of the army Deng Xiaoping wanted to consolidate his control over the People's Liberation Army, a reading that is contested.

Relations with the Soviet Union were frozen for much of the 1980s by the Sino-Soviet split and by three obstacles that Deng identified: Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Soviet troops in Mongolia, and Vietnam's presence in Cambodia. Gradual talks eventually produced a summit. Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to Beijing in May 1989 ended roughly three decades of estrangement between the two Communist states, although the ceremonial arrangements were disrupted by the protests that were then occurring in the capital.

Hong Kong and Macau were handled through negotiated treaties rather than through coercion. The Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed in December 1984, set 1 July 1997 as the date for the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration of April 1987 provided for the return of Macau, which took place on 20 December 1999. Both agreements were built on the principle of "one country, two systems". Under this formula, the two territories would keep their own capitalist economic and legal systems, and their own degree of autonomy, for fifty years after the handover. Deng presented the same formula as a possible basis for reunification with Taiwan. The Basic Law, adopted in 1990, set out the constitutional arrangements for Hong Kong after 1997. The framework was intended to reconcile the sovereignty claims of Beijing with the territories' existing systems, and debates about its implementation continue, which is discussed in the section on the 1989 protests.

Science, education, and social policy

Restoring the national university entrance examination was one of the earliest large decisions taken after Deng returned to office in 1977. In August of that year he chaired a science and education symposium in Beijing, where participants called for an immediate resumption, and he gave the proposal explicit backing. In October, the State Council approved the ministry's report on holding national examinations in the winter of 1977, and the eligibility rules were broad, covering workers, peasants, former sent-down youth, ex-servicemen and officials as well as that year's senior secondary graduates. In the first session after the restoration, 5.7 million people registered and 273,000 new students were admitted. Only 4.8% of applicants were admitted. Because the examination took place in winter, the cohorts of 1977 and 1978 entered university in the same calendar year. Deng's reasoning, as recorded in accounts of the decision, was that Chinese education had fallen roughly two decades behind advanced countries, and that a national examination was the best way to select talent. The new system also loosened the link to family background that had governed admission during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement.

Alongside the examination, Deng promoted the sending of Chinese students abroad. He backed both resuming the college entrance examination and dispatching Chinese students overseas. Commentators have credited the examination with cultivating talent and intellectuals needed for China's reform and modernization. The wider research agenda followed the same logic: at the March 1978 National Science Conference, Deng argued that science and technology were productive forces, and this framing underpinned the reopening of research institutes, the rebuilding of academic ranks and renewed contact with foreign scientists. Technology transfer through imported equipment and joint projects expanded in the following years, although the scale and results of these programs varied considerably across sectors.

Family planning was the most consequential and contested social policy of this period. A policy encouraging all couples to limit themselves to one child was announced in January 1979. The leadership then issued a formal directive in September 1980. The Party Central Committee published an "Open Letter" announcing a drastic programme of 20 to 30 years' duration to restrict population growth, and the State Council advocated one child per couple in order to limit the population to 1.2 billion by the end of the century. Officials at the time already recognized that the total fertility rate was 2.2, slightly above replacement level, but they nonetheless pursued a much lower target. Enforcement relied on financial penalties and administrative pressure, and although some enforcement methods were comparatively mild, such as providing contraceptives, millions of Chinese had to endure forced sterilizations and forced abortions.

The demographic results were large and have remained a subject of debate. Fertility fell sharply, and the open letter's architects succeeded in dramatically decreasing the fertility level. The policy also produced a skewed sex ratio at birth: the ratio of males to females rose by 0.2 over 25 years, from 0.95 in 1980 to 1.15 in 2005. Amartya Sen's phrase "missing women" has been applied to this imbalance. The program was discontinued in 2016.

Disability policy developed more slowly, and in several steps. The China Association for the Blind and Deaf resumed its functions in 1978, and the 1982 amended Constitution for the first time required the state and society to help citizens with disabilities in employment, daily life and education. A China Welfare Fund for the Handicapped was set up in 1984, and in 1987 Deng Pufang was the prime mover behind a national survey of people with disabilities. Deng Pufang, who had himself been paralyzed after Red Guard violence in 1966, then led the creation of the China Disabled Persons' Federation. In 1988 the CDPF was founded as a multifunctional body, with Deng Pufang as chairman and executive president of its council. Legislation followed: in December 1990 the Standing Committee of the Seventh National People's Congress adopted the Law on the Protection of Disabled Persons, which came into force on May 15, 1991. In 1991, legislation was passed to recognize mental illness as a disability.

Political reform and leadership succession, 1980–1987

Deng's case for institutional reform was laid out most fully in a speech he gave on 18 August 1980 to an enlarged meeting of the Politburo. He treated bureaucracy, concentrated authority, paternalism and lifelong tenure for cadres as structural faults that the system itself had to correct. Over-concentration of power is liable to give rise to arbitrary rule by individuals at the expense of collective leadership, and he presented this as a principal source of bureaucracy. The reform agenda built on earlier steps: the Secretariat had been re-established at the Fifth Plenary Session in February 1980, and Hua Guofeng gave up the premiership, which passed to Zhao Ziyang.

On term limits, the first concrete measure came in April 1980, when the enlarged Politburo meeting adopted a decision proposed by Deng that barred old comrades who had lost their working capacity from candidacy as delegates to the 12th National Congress and the Central Committee. This marked the beginning of the abolition of the lifetime tenure system for leading cadres. The 1982 Party constitution then declared that leaders are not entitled to lifelong tenure, but it set no fixed limits on the terms of top Party posts, including the general secretary. To bridge the gap, the 12th Party Congress created a Central Advisory Commission, which gave veteran leaders an official role in advising their successors. Deng presented it as a transitional body, stating that if the problem is solved smoothly and by the end of two five-year periods a retirement system is established, that will be a great victory for us. Deng chaired the commission from September 1982 until November 1987.

The 1982 state constitution gave the institutional form to these principles. It restored the offices of president and vice president and set a two-term limit for the posts. A 1983 revision was also reported to have fixed terms of no more than two consecutive five-year terms for the president, the chairman of the National People's Congress and the premier of the State Council. The constitutional changes were accompanied by a reorganization of the Party's top posts. Hu Yaobang first served as Party chairman from 1981 to 1982, and then as general secretary from 1982 to 1987, as the chairmanship was replaced by the general secretaryship. Deng's own state and military posts were reorganized in the same period. He became chairman of the Central Military Commission in June 1983 and held the Party Commission chairmanship until 1989.

Retirement proved uneven in practice. Beginning at a 1985 party conference and continuing at the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1987, the Long March generation of leaders, including Deng himself, retired from the Politburo. Deng also said in 1986 that political reform required a broader, more systematic discussion; the official chronology records that he spoke about the issue of political reform four times in September and November that year. His own dominance of succession decisions, however, remained clear. Deng had earlier rejected Hu Yaobang's proposal for a rotating chairmanship system in which each member would be equal and take turns running meetings, which Deng viewed as an attempt to set up a true system of collective leadership.

The Hu Yaobang episode showed the limits of this reform. Hu was seen as a protégé who favoured openness, and in 1986 he did not oppose the student demonstrations that emerged in 15 cities to demand the rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, and a free press. Conservatives blamed him for the protests, and a CCP campaign against "bourgeois liberalization" followed, which was clearly aimed at undoing Hu's legacy. Hu tendered his resignation at a party-life meeting in mid-January, where he made a self-criticism and received criticisms from others. Accounts indicate that Deng and other elders presided over that meeting. The Politburo announced on 16 January 1987 that it had accepted the resignation, and Zhao Ziyang became general secretary in January 1987. Hu kept his seat on the Politburo.

The 1989 protests and their aftermath

Public mourning for the former Party chief Hu Yaobang, who died in April 1989, became the occasion for a much wider movement. Hu Yaobang's death in April 1989 sparked demonstrations calling for political and economic reforms. Student-led protests ran from 15 April to 4 June 1989, centred on Tiananmen Square in Beijing and extended to roughly 400 cities nationwide. Demonstrators pressed for an end to corruption in the Party, freedom of the press and of association, and democratic reform. Inside the leadership, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang favored a moderate response to the demonstrators, while Premier Li Peng and other hardliners placed him at odds with Zhao over how to handle the protests. Deng, as paramount leader, backed the harder line. Deng's own early attitude toward the demonstrations is described in one account as considerably less sympathetic than the reformist rhetoric of the period had suggested. Deng would prove far less enthusiastic about the calls for wider social freedoms.

Divisions were not confined to the Politburo. US military intelligence reporting later indicated that significant cleavages existed within the Chinese political leadership and security apparatus over the decision to use force. The decisive step came on 20 May, when Li Peng declared martial law in response to growing protests. Deng, who chaired the Central Military Commission, spoke for the Party elders, whose impatience with the government's failure to end the movement had built up over nearly a month. Deng expressed the impatience of party elders with the government's inability to end the student movement.

Enforcement was planned for the night of 3–4 June. At an emergency meeting on 3 June, leaders including Yang Shangkun and Li Peng, together with senior military officers, set out timetables for the operation: the operation to quell the counterrevolutionary riot would begin at 9:00 p.m., and military units should converge on the square by 1:00 a.m. on June 4. Troops advancing into the capital were met by residents who tried to block their path, and in the ensuing clashes, especially in western Beijing, the troops opened fire. Casualty figures remain disputed. Official CCP tally: 241 dead, while independent estimates range far higher, and modern scholarship places the toll in the hundreds to the low thousands. The crackdown drew Western sanctions and arms embargoes, which placed the episode within wider debates about human rights in China.

Zhao's position collapsed in the aftermath. Zhao's formal dismissal from his top party and government posts followed in June 1989, and he was replaced as general secretary by Jiang Zemin. Although he retained his party membership, Zhao remained under house arrest until his death in 2005. Jiang was not a figure with an established national power base. He had been appointed to succeed Zhao in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests as a compromise candidate. Jiang formally took office as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party on 24 June 1989.

Deng's formal retirement was gradual. On 9 November 1989, he resigned after eight years as Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman in a reshuffle of the body. He thereby gave up his last formal Party post, and Jiang was named his successor at the head of the military commission. Western diplomats at the time expected that Deng would keep his primacy. Military posts were rearranged in a way that reinforced the Yang family's position: Yang Shangkun's elevation to the position of first vice chairman of the military commission, and his younger brother Gen. Yang Baibing appointed as executive secretary. Jiang's dependence on the military leadership was seen as a limitation on his authority. The rest of the Elders officially retired after the 14th Party Congress in October 1992 when the Central Advisory Commission was abolished. They still held decisive influence behind the scenes until Deng's death in February 1997.

Assessments of Deng's responsibility differ. A former US official who served in the Carter administration wrote in 1997 that as paramount leader in 1989, Deng bears responsibility, which he readily acknowledged afterward, for ending the Tiananmen demonstrations by force. Another analysis argues that the decision was taken despite the personal opposition of a majority of the PSC, military leadership, the Chinese state legislature, and even many key revolutionary elders. The consequences for policy were significant: serious discussions of real change ended after Tiananmen Square, a question that became central to the reform debates of the early 1990s.

Southern Tour and the socialist market economy, 1992–1997

After the 1989 crackdown, reform had lost momentum, and conservatives in the leadership argued for a return to central planning. Deng had resigned his last formal post, the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, in November 1989, but he retained considerable influence. In January 1992, at the age of 87, he left Beijing on a trip through southern China that the leadership had not publicly announced. He visited Wuhan, Changsha, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shanghai between 18 January and 21 February. The journey, known as the Nanxun or "southern tour," took place largely outside the normal channels of the Party bureaucracy. Deng's remarks in Guangdong and Shanghai pressed for faster market-oriented reform and wider opening to the outside world.

The tour changed the terms of the policy debate. Deng argued that planning was not the defining feature of socialism and that markets were not the defining feature of capitalism; both were economic means that socialism could use. This reframing weakened the ideological objections of conservatives such as Chen Yun. In March 1992, Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin convened a Politburo meeting that required cadres to study Deng's recent statements on building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Historians widely regard the tour as the point at which reform was revived after Tiananmen. It also reassured foreign investors, who had grown cautious after Western arms embargoes and the suspension of some international development-bank loans.

The 14th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party met in Beijing from 12 to 18 October 1992, with about 2,000 delegates representing roughly 51 million members. Its report declared that the goal of economic restructuring was to establish a socialist market economic system, and that the market should play the basic role in allocating resources under state macroeconomic control. The term itself had been introduced by Jiang Zemin, who had first sought Deng's approval. Before 1992, official language had spoken of a "planned commodity economy," and the market had been treated as a concept to be avoided. By the time of the congress, the mandatory-planning share of industrial output had already fallen to roughly 16 percent, while market-regulated products made up more than 40 percent. The congress also introduced the formula "Deng Xiaoping's theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics." In March 1993, the National People's Congress wrote the socialist market economy into the state constitution, replacing the earlier formula of a planned economy based on socialist public ownership.

The economic content of the 1990s followed from this decision. Prices for a growing range of goods and services were gradually freed from state setting. Shanghai and Shenzhen opened stock exchanges in 1990 and 1991, creating a securities market that had not existed under the planned system. The reform of state-owned enterprises aimed to separate them from direct administrative control, make them responsible for their own profits and losses, and organize them under corporate forms. A 1993 Party decision, drafted at the Third Plenary Session of the 14th Central Committee, set out the overall framework of this market-oriented system. Reform did not proceed evenly. Local governments, banks and large state firms resisted some measures, and the period saw both rapid growth and rising regional and social inequality.

Deng died in Beijing on 19 February 1997, aged 92, shortly before the 15th National Congress, which met from 12 to 18 September 1997. That congress enshrined "Deng Xiaoping Theory" as a guiding ideology alongside Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought and wrote it into the Party constitution. This was the first time the name of a leader other than Mao appeared in that document. The congress also set out the goal of retaining state ownership in large enterprises while letting smaller ones adjust, and it treated Deng's emphasis on economic development and the coexistence of market mechanisms with socialism as central to the Party's line. In March 1999, the National People's Congress amended the state constitution to establish the guiding role of Deng Xiaoping Theory in state affairs.

Doctrine, slogans, and principles

Deng's doctrinal vocabulary paired a fixed political frame with flexible working methods. The Four Cardinal Principles set the outer boundary, while a set of pragmatic formulas governed how reform was carried out.

The formula was unveiled at a Party theory conference on 30 March 1979 Deng delivered his "Upholding the Four Cardinal Principles" report. It bundled four commitments: keeping to the path of socialism; upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat (people's democratic dictatorship); upholding the leadership of the CPC; and upholding Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. In Deng's account, the principles were a precondition for modernization: if any one of these four basic principles is shaken, the entire cause of socialism and the entire cause of modernization will be shaken. In practice they marked the limit of political change. Economic experimentation was tolerated, but the basic direction of the system was not open to debate, and the four issues on which debate would not be allowed were treated as fixed.

The image of crossing the river by feeling the stones (摸着石头过河) became the most recognizable description of Deng's reform method, though it was originally coined at the administrative meeting of the State Council of the Central People's Government on April 7, 1950, and it has always been associated with Deng Xiaoping. In his December 1978 speech, the approach meant that we can begin with limited spheres, say, a particular region or a given trade, and then spread the methods gradually to others. Biographers describe the same stance from a different angle: according to Keo's account, Deng acknowledged that he had a vision of where to go but not a map of how to get there.

The principle of "seeking truth from facts" (实事求是) is usually read as a pragmatic counterweight to inherited dogma. Scholars often set Deng's use of it against the ideological style of the Mao era, and contrast his 'seeking truth from facts' philosophy with Mao's ideologies. In the 1979 speech, Deng linked the phrase to calls to free thinking and to look toward the future, which he presented as the basis for the Party's next stage.

The phrase usually rendered as "hide brightness, nourish obscurity" (韬光养晦, taoguang yanghui) is among the most frequently quoted of Deng's foreign-policy formulas, and its most well-known line is taoguang yanghui. Beijing's official rendering stresses waiting while building strength, since the official Beijing interpretation translates the four-character idiom, "Bide our time and build up our capabilities." A related instruction counseled restraint about visibility. Deng was also stressing that China should not "take the lead" or "carry the flag". The dating of the formula is disputed. One account places its early use in the early 1990s, when Deng asked diplomats to remain calm, watch global change, and be ready to seize opportunities (he was asking Chinese diplomats to be calm, to attentively observe the global changes and be prepared to seize any opportunities that might arise). Another dates a guideline of twenty-four characters to not long before his death in 1997. The attribution itself is also contested: the phrase is commonly attributed to Deng Xiaoping, although the phrase was in fact coined by his successor, Jiang Zemin. Chinese commentators have also argued that outsiders have misinterpreted and misunderstood the phrase.

This restraint abroad was paired with an economy-first logic at home. Deng's shorthand "One Center, Two Basic Points" held that the central focus of the Chinese state was economic development, pursued alongside political control and market reform.

After Deng's death in February 1997, the Party's 15th Congress that September wrote "Deng Xiaoping Theory" into the Party constitution as a development of Marxism–Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. Its codification meant that pragmatic reform and political orthodoxy were recorded together as a single guiding ideology.

Family, personal life, and public image

Marriages and children

Deng's first two marriages ended early. His first wife, Zhang Xiyuan, had been a schoolmate in Moscow; she died at twenty-four, days after giving birth to a daughter who also did not survive a few days after giving birth to Deng's first child, a baby girl, who also died. His second wife, Jin Weiying, ended the marriage after he came under political attack in 1933 after he came under political attack in 1933.

His third wife, Zhuo Lin, came from a Yunnan industrial family. Joining the Communist Party in 1938, she wed Deng in Yan'an the following year. The couple had five children, three daughters and two sons Three daughters (Deng Lin, Deng Nan, Deng Rong) and two sons (Deng Pufang, Deng Zhifang).. A retrospective in Time contrasted their steady marriage with Mao's more turbulent private life, while noting that wartime demands left the couple little time for family The civil war, which was soon subsumed into the bloody conflict with invading Japanese forces, provided little time for family and certainly no time for home.

The children and the Cultural Revolution

When Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Deng was removed from all his offices, and the Red Guards extended their campaign to his household Deng, accused of being a "bourgeoisie," was forced to retire from all his offices. Deng and his family were targeted by Red Guards. His eldest son, Deng Pufang, was injured by Red Guards and was left paraplegic he was injured by the Red Guards and became a paraplegic. Deng Pufang later devoted himself to disability work. He was the principal founder of the China Disabled Persons' Federation, established in Beijing in March 1988 established in Beijing, China in March 1988. He led the organization from 1988 to 2008 From 1988 to 2008, he served as the president of the China Disabled Persons' Federation. In 1987 he drove a national survey of people with disabilities In 1987, he was the prime mover behind a national survey for people with disabilities., and the national disability protection law adopted in December 1990 took effect in May 1991 In December 1990, The 17th meeting of the Seventh National People's Congress Standing Committee examined and adopted the People's Republic of China on Protection of Disabled Persons Act. The Act will come into force on May 15, 1991.

Deng Rong, the third daughter, was born in Chongqing in 1950 Born: January 1950 (age 76) Chongqing, China. As a student at the time, she was a prominent Red Guard leader, and she has been accused of a role in covering up the 1966 killing of Bian Zhongyun by Red Guards She has been accused of playing a key role in the cover-up of the 1966 killing of Bian Zhongyun by Red Guards. In later decades she held a public post in the China Association for International Friendly Contact, a role she has held since 1990 Vice President of the China Association for International Friendly Contact - Incumbent - Assumed office 1990. Deng Nan, the second daughter, trained as a physicist at Peking University She studied physics at Peking University from 1964 to 1970. and later served as a vice minister of the State Science and Technology Commission She served as vice minister of China's State Science and Technology Commission from 1998 to 2004.

Zhuo Lin held the post of First Lady from 1978 to 1989 First Lady of China In role 1978–1989. She accompanied Deng on his 1992 southern tour, and she died in Beijing in 2009 She died on July 29, 2009, aged 93, in Beijing.

Temperament and public image

Deng's political stamina became a recurring theme in accounts of his career. He was denounced during the Cultural Revolution as the party's second-ranking "capitalist roader" and was purged twice, yet he returned to politics both times he was denounced as the party's "number two capitalist roader" after Liu Shaoqi and was twice purged by Mao, spending four years working in a tractor factory before returning to politics.. Biographers and former colleagues also commonly describe him as physically small and blunt in speech. Those accounts are the usual basis for his personal reputation, though they are less systematically documented in the sources consulted here.

Internationally, Deng's profile rose sharply after 1978. Time named him its Man of the Year at the start of 1979, and his visit to the United States that January became a widely reported event A month later, Deng, Time Magazine's new man of the year, flew to the United States for an eight-day triumphant journey. He toured the country, appeared at a Texas rodeo wearing an oversized cowboy hat. Time honored him a second time in 1985, citing his economic reforms as having challenged Marxist orthodoxy The magazine announced Deng was 'selected this year for introducing China's sweeping economic reforms which have challenged Marxist orthodoxies an liberated the productive energies of a billion people.'. Critics on the political left have treated these honors more skeptically, arguing that the Western praise for his market-oriented reforms overlooks their costs Celebrated by the West for his pro-market reforms, leftists should be more skeptical of his accomplishments.

Historiography, assessments, and legacy

Biographies and divergent portraits

Ezra Vogel's Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2011) is the most detailed Western biography of Deng. Its central claim is that only Deng's unique leadership strengths made China's extraordinary economic rise possible. Vogel is not uncritical. The publisher's description notes that he emphasizes the successful consequences of his economic reforms, but does not shy from criticizing his failures, and the portrait that results is of a visionary authoritarian who helped the country recover from Mao's damage.

Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine's Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (Oxford University Press, 2015) takes a more critical line. Its authors drew on Soviet-era files, and reviewers consider its most original material to concern Deng's years before 1949. The book's tone is harsher: one review describes it as relentless and occasionally sarcastic, and it portrays a leader so shaped by Maoist authoritarian habits that he would put his reforms at risk for communist aims. Jonathan Mirsky's review in the New York Review of Books reads the biography as holding Deng, together with Mao, responsible for millions of deaths in the famine years. The authors themselves quote Deng's wish to be judged evenly, that he would be content to be rated fifty-fifty in merits and demerits, and they set out to measure those merits and demerits as far as the record allows. A third reading, by Kerry Brown in Times Higher Education, holds that Deng's achievement was to supply the broad frameworks, a mix of market reform and socialist rule, within which China still operates.

The 1981 Resolution

The Party's Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China was unanimously adopted by the sixth plenary session of the 11th Central Committee on 27 June 1981. The day before, the plenum had accepted Hua Guofeng's resignation as chairman. The document attributes Mao's errors to individualist tendencies that emerged when he departed from collective leadership, and it dates them to the Great Leap Forward. It also places part of the blame on Jiang Qing, Kang Sheng and Lin Biao, whom it describes as careerists who exploited and magnified Mao's mistakes. Its overall verdict is that Mao's contributions to the revolution outweigh his errors, which the text calls secondary.

Deng's role in shaping the text is well documented. In an August 1980 interview with Oriana Fallaci he said that Mao's mistakes were only secondary, and the drafting committee then rewrote the document. In his remarks on the drafts, Deng rejected Mao's own appraisal of the Cultural Revolution as 70 percent correct and 30 percent wrong, asking how such a split could be reconciled with the claim of 70 percent achievement. The resolution itself contains no numerical ratio; the "70–30" formula became popular in later accounts. The resolution also kept Mao Zedong Thought as a guiding ideology and shifted the Party's priorities from class struggle toward economic development.

Reform, poverty, and growth

Assessments of the reform era divide over attribution and cost. Most economists credit the post-1978 reforms with one of the fastest sustained expansions of output in modern history and with lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. Critics question how much of that gain was specific to Deng's decisions. They point to earlier Maoist investments in health and literacy, to the effects of rural price increases and the household responsibility system, and to the benefits of global trade and foreign capital that developed after the late 1970s.

The costs are equally contested. Growth widened gaps between coastal and inland provinces and between urban and rural households, and migrant workers were long denied full urban residence rights. Restructuring of state enterprises in the 1990s produced large-scale layoffs, and rapid industrialization caused severe environmental damage. Corruption grew alongside marketization; one reviewer of Pantsov and Levine notes the biographers' emphasis on Deng's studied indifference to the endemic and flagrant corruption that his reforms occasioned.

The 1989 crackdown

The 1989 crackdown remains the most contested element of Deng's legacy. Pantsov and Levine open their account with it, describing the order to suppress the student demonstrations as one given by Deng himself. The martial-law operations of 3–4 June 1989 are generally treated by historians as the decisive act of that spring, but estimates of the death toll vary widely, and the official record remains closed. The biographers' conclusions are provisional for the same reason: their account is limited until the Chinese Communist Party's archives become accessible.

The debate turns on two questions. One is whether the crackdown was necessary to preserve stability for the reform program, a view held by the Chinese government and by some analysts. The other is whether it revealed the limits of reform within an authoritarian system. One reviewer argues that Deng and his successors preserved the Party's rule by suppressing the democratic movement while allowing a market economy to develop. Whether the economic achievements justify the political costs remains an open question in scholarship on Deng.

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204. Where's the "official" verdict that Mao was 70% correct, 30% wrong? — JUDE BLANCHETTEjudeblanchette.com