Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese statesman and revolutionary who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1989. Emerging as China's most influential figure after Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng consolidated political power and guided the country into an era of reform and opening up that transitioned the nation toward a socialist market economy. Credited as the "Architect of Modern China", he is recognized for shaping both socialism with Chinese characteristics and Deng Xiaoping Theory.
Born into a landowning peasant family in Sichuan, Deng was introduced to Marxism–Leninism while studying and working in France during the 1920s as part of the Work–Study Movement. He then studied in Moscow and, after returning to China, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1924. During the Chinese Civil War, he worked in the Jiangxi Soviet and maintained close ties with Mao. Deng later served as a political commissar in the Chinese Red Army during the Long March and Second Sino-Japanese War, helping secure CCP victory in 1949 and taking part in the People's Liberation Army capture of Nanjing.
Following Mao's founding of the PRC, Deng rose to prominence as the vice premier of China and CCP secretary-general, overseeing economic reconstruction and playing a leading role in the Anti-Rightist Campaign. However, during the Cultural Revolution, 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. After Mao's death in 1976, Deng outmaneuvered political rivals and became China's paramount leader by 1978.
Upon coming to power, Deng began a massive overhaul of China's infrastructure and political system. Due to institutional disorder and turmoil from the Mao era, he and allies launched the Boluan Fanzheng program which sought to restore order by rehabilitating those persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. His reform and opening up policies introduced market incentives, established special economic zones, encouraged foreign investment, and accelerated China's integration into the global economy. Deng also pursued major state reforms, including constitutional term limits, the one-child policy to address population growth, a nine-year compulsory education system, and promotion of technology through the 863 Program. These changes shifted China away from a command economy and Maoist orthodoxy, laying the foundation for decades of rapid economic growth. Deng negotiated the handover of Hong Kong and handover of Macau and formulated the guiding principle of "one country, two systems".
Deng was named Time Person of the Year in 1978 and 1985. Despite contributions to China's modernization, Deng's legacy is also marked by controversy. He ordered the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which halted his political reforms and remains a subject of international condemnation. Nonetheless, Deng's policies enabled China's rise as one of the world's great powers. He was succeeded by Jiang Zemin, who continued his reform agenda.
Early life and family
Deng's ancestors can be traced back to Jiaying County, Guangdong, a prominent ancestral area for the Hakka people, and had settled in Sichuan for several generations. Deng's daughter Deng Rong wrote in the book My Father Deng Xiaoping that his ancestry was probably, but not definitely, Hakka. Sichuan was originally the origin of the Deng lineage until one of them was hired as an official in Guangdong during the Ming dynasty, but when the Qing dynasty planned to increase the population in 1671, they moved back to Sichuan. Deng was born in Guang'an District, Guang'an on 22 August 1904 in Sichuan province.Deng's father, Deng Wenming, was a mid-level landowner who had studied at the University of Law and Political Science in Chengdu, Sichuan. He was locally prominent. His mother, surnamed Dan, died early in Deng's life, leaving Deng, his three brothers, and three sisters. At the age of five, Deng was sent to a traditional Chinese-style private primary school, followed by a more modern primary school at the age of seven.
Deng's first wife, one of his schoolmates from Moscow, died aged 24 a few days after giving birth to their first child, a baby girl who also died. His second wife, Jin Weiying, left him after Deng came under political attack in 1933. His third wife, Zhuo Lin, was the daughter of an industrialist in Yunnan. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, and married Deng a year later in front of Mao's cave dwelling in Yan'an. They had five children: three daughters and two sons. Deng quit smoking when he was 86.
Education and early career
Deng's given name was Xiansheng. When Deng first attended school, his tutor objected to him having the given name Xiansheng, instead calling him "Xixian", which includes the characters "to aspire to" and "goodness", with overtones of wisdom.In the summer of 1919, Deng graduated from the Chongqing School. He and 80 schoolmates travelled by ship to France to participate in the Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement, a work-study program in which 4,001 Chinese would participate by 1927. Deng, the youngest of all the Chinese students in the group, had just turned 15. Wu Yuzhang, the local leader of the Movement in Chongqing, enrolled Deng and his paternal uncle, Deng Shaosheng, in the program. Deng's father strongly supported his son's participation in the work-study abroad program. The night before his departure, Deng's father took his son aside and asked him what he hoped to learn in France. He repeated the words he had learned from his teachers: "To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China." Deng was aware that China was suffering greatly, and that the Chinese people must have a modern education to save their country.
On 19 October 1920, a French packet ship, the André Lebon, sailed into Marseille with 210 Chinese students aboard including Deng. The sixteen-year-old Deng briefly attended middle schools in Bayeux and Châtillon, but he spent most of his time in France working, including at a Renault factory and as a fitter at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel Plant in La Garenne-Colombes, a north-western suburb of Paris where he moved in April 1921. Coincidentally, when Deng's later political fortunes were down and he was sent to work in a tractor factory in 1969 during the Cultural Revolution, he found himself a fitter again and proved to still be a master of the skill.
In La Garenne-Colombes Deng met future CCP leaders Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Li Fuchun, Li Lisan and Li Weihan. In June 1923 he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe. In the second half of 1924, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and became one of the leading members of the Youth League in Europe. In 1926 Deng traveled to the Soviet Union and studied at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, where one of his classmates was Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek.
Return to China
In late 1927, Deng left Moscow to return to the Republic of China, where he joined the army of Feng Yuxiang, a military leader in northwest China, who had requested assistance from the Soviet Union in his struggle with other local leaders in the region. At that time, the Soviet Union, through the Comintern, an international organization supporting the Communist movements, supported the Communists' alliance with the Nationalists of the Kuomintang party founded by Sun Yat-sen.He arrived in Xi'an, the stronghold of Feng Yuxiang, in March 1927. He was part of the Guominjun's attempt to prevent the break of the alliance between the KMT and the Communists. This split resulted in part from Chiang Kai-shek's forcing them to flee areas controlled by the KMT. After the breakup of the alliance between Communists and Nationalists, Feng Yuxiang stood on the side of Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communists who participated in their army, such as Deng Xiaoping, were forced to flee.
Political rise
Although Deng got involved in the Marxist revolutionary movement in China, the historian Mobo Gao has argued that "Deng Xiaoping and many like him were not really Marxists, but basically revolutionary nationalists who wanted to see China standing on equal terms with the great global powers. They were primarily nationalists and they participated in the Communist revolution because that was the only viable route they could find to Chinese nationalism."Activism in Shanghai and Wuhan
After leaving the army of Feng Yuxiang in the northwest, Deng ended up in the city of Wuhan, where the Communists at that time had their headquarters. At that time, he began using the nickname "Xiaoping" and occupied prominent positions in the party apparatus. He participated in the historic emergency session on 7 August 1927 in which, by Soviet instruction, the Party dismissed its founder Chen Duxiu, and Qu Qiubai became the general secretary. In Wuhan, Deng first established contact with Mao Zedong, who was then little valued by militant pro-Soviet leaders of the party.Between 1927 and 1929, Deng lived in Shanghai, where he helped organize protests that would be harshly persecuted by the Kuomintang authorities. The death of many Communist militants in those years led to a decrease in the number of members of the Communist Party, which enabled Deng to quickly move up the ranks.
Deng married Zhang Xiyuan, who died in 1930 during childbirth. The couple's daughter also died during her birth.