DENG Xiaoping

Ezra F. VOGEL, Harvard University

1904–1997— Military leader; general secretary of the CCP; deputy premier and deputy chairman of China; ♂ Dèng Xiǎopíng 邓小平 Alternate names: born Dèng Xiānshèng 邓先圣

Abstract: Deng Xiaoping was China’s preeminent leader from 1978–1992, a man who guided the transformation of China from a poor, divided, and chaotic country and achieved the dream of Chinese leaders since the Opium War of setting China on a path of enriching the people and becoming a global power. He joined the Communist movement in France in 1923, and became a revolutionary leader and a soldier. From 1952–1966 he held key positions implementing Mao Zedong’s policies. He fell from office three times, but as top leader from 1978–1992 he maintained order, developed good relations with major foreign powers, transformed the Communist Party from a revolutionary party to a ruling party, opened markets, and sent tens of thousands abroad to bring in modern technology and management. Several hundred million people were raised above the poverty line under Deng’s leadership. From the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography.

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Deng Xiaoping was the paramount figure who led the transformation of China to a modern nation. A revolutionary leader from the mid-1920s and a high-level political commissar in the military from the late-1930s through the 1940s, Deng led the establishment of Communist power in China’s southwest from 1949 to 1952. After being brought to Beijing by Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 (1893–1976) in 1952, Deng served as vice-premier and general secretary of the Communist Party for over a decade. He was three times removed from office and subjected to criticism, but since he joined the Communist movement in 1923, he was never thrown out of the Party. From 1978 to 1992 he was China’s preeminent leader, guiding the bold Reforms and Opening Up that set the country on a new path and brought rapid modernization, and enabling China to play a major role in world affairs.

Childhood and Early Education

Deng was born in Paifang village (also known as Yaoping), Sichuan Province, in 1904. Xiaoping’s father, Deng Wenming, was a landlord who had several farm hands. Deng initially received a classical Confucian education, but switched to a local public elementary school in 1915 that taught modern subjects, such as history, mathematics, and science.

In 1919, in the wake of World War I, Deng Xiaoping, not yet fifteen, joined in the patriotic demonstrations taking place around the country against negotiations about handing over Chinese territory from Germany to Japan. From that time on he was deeply concerned with strengthening China so it could resist being dominated by foreign countries.

France, and the Start of a Political Career

That same year, Deng was sent to a school that prepared him for going abroad to study, and upon graduation the next year, he and eighty-three other boys boarded a ship for France, where they would receive education in modern subjects and then return home to play a role in the modernization of China.

After arriving in France, however, the political and economic situation made it increasingly difficult to find a job, and Deng, like the vast majority of the other young Chinese intellectuals in France, did not have enough money to attend high school or university. The “worker-students” became only workers, and those who had read Marx and Engels, and those familiar with the Russian Revolution that took place in 1917, found the explanations that fit their own experience.

Party Politics in France

The student politics in France reflected the politics of the time in China, where the Communists and Nationalists worked together in the First United Front (1923–1927). Deng, called “Mr. Mimeograph,” became an assistant to Zhōu Ēnlái 周恩来 (1898–1976), the leader of the Communist students in France, and as an editor, writer, and mimeographer he helped put out a news sheet distributed to Chinese in France, promoting the leftist cause within the Nationalist Party (Guómíndǎng 国民党, or GMD). In 1923, Deng became a member of the Communist Party, and at the end of 1925, after taking part in demonstrations against the French government, he had to escape through Germany and Poland to Moscow.

Soon after Deng arrived in Moscow in January 1926, he was assigned to be a member of the first class of the newly established Sun Yat-sen University (Zhongshan University), set up by Moscow leaders to train Communist Party members for China and elsewhere in Asia.

Return to China

Deng was in Moscow a year when, even before graduation, he was assigned to return to China. After the split between the Nationalists and the Communists in 1927, he was assigned to the Communist underground. In 1929, at age twenty-five, he was sent to cooperate with some small warlords in Guangxi Province to lead urban insurrections in Baise and Longzhou. After a battle in which they suffered heavy losses, Deng was separated from his troops, and chose to return to Party headquarters in Shanghai.

After some months of waiting in Shanghai, Deng was allowed to join Mao’s forces in Jiangxi where they aimed to set up a rural base that would gain the strength necessary to take on the Nationalists. Like Mao, Deng disagreed with the Party leaders in Shanghai, and was soon dismissed from his posts, but was soon brought back on to head provincial propaganda work. During the Long March—a 9,600-kilometer (6,000-mile) series of military retreats undertaken by the CCP’s Red Army—Deng was responsible for putting out a newssheet to buoy up the troops on the March. After the Long Marchers arrived in Yan'an in 1937, Japan invaded China, and the Communists and Nationalists forged a second period of United Front. Deng was assigned to be a political commissar, responsible for the military’s political education, organization, and loyalty to the government.

After the end of World War II in 1945, and as the Civil War broke out between the Nationalists and the Communists, Deng continued to fight against the Nationalist Army. After the Communist victory over the Nationalists, culminating in the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng, together with his former Army comrade Liu Bocheng, was placed in charge of the southwest region (headquartered in Sichuan, Deng's home province). In 1952, Deng and many other leaders transferred to Beijing. Deng first became deputy premier in the government, and served as finance minister for a year from 1953. Along with Mao, Deng participated in campaigns against counter-revolutionaries, landlords, profiteering officials, and business people. Indeed, Deng played a major role in implementing the anti-Rightist campaign. Although Liu Shaoqi was officially Mao’s successor, it was clear to many that Mao considered Deng a leading candidate to be his successor.

The Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution

In mid-1958, the Great Leap Forward was launched and in the autumn Deng traveled to various provinces supporting the efforts to establish rural communes and to speed up industrialization. He began to comment on problems, and warned that the Communist Party still needed to “seek the correct path from facts” (shíshì qiúshì 实事求是) (i.e., look at the real situation and not be guided by ideology alone). Although Deng did not criticize Mao’s policies in public, by reporting to Mao less often, he obtained a measure of freedom to do what he regarded as necessary to adapt to the problems.