1997 saw the demise of a great man - Deng Xiaoping. Deng is a great leader who, despite being a communist and various human rights abuses, has delivered China from a Third World basket case into a new emerging tiger economy.

Deng's birthplace was Paifang Village in Xiexing township, Guang'an County, in the province of Sichuan. His childhood home was a traditional compound with one-storied housed surrounding a courtyard on three sides. It was in these tree-shaded, tile-roofed buildings that his forefathers had lived for three generations and that Deng Xixian - the future Deng Xiaoping - was born on August 22,1904.

His father, Deng Wenming, had studied at the Chengdu School of Law and Political Science during the last Xiaoping’s mother, Dan by her family name, died early, leaving behind the eldest son Deng Xiaoping, his three younger brothers, an elder sister and two younger sisters.

At five the boy entered and old-fashioned private pre-school, at seven a modern primary school and in due course a middle school in his native county. It happened that in 1919, on the proposal of Wu Yezhang, a member of the Chongqing to prepare young people to go to France on a work-study program. Deng, the youngest of all the Chinese students, had just turned 16.

Things did not turn our as he had hoped. He found that he had to spend most of his time working, and at the most unskilled jobs. Two months after his arrival he began to do odd jobs at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in central France. Later he worked as a fitter in the Renault factory in the Paris suburb of Billancourt, as a fireman on locomotive and as a kitchen helper in restaurants. He barely earned enough to survive. He attended middle schools briefly in Bayeux and Chatillon.

Deng Xiao Ping joined the Communist party in Paris in 1924. During the five years he spent in France, from age 16 to 21, Deng Xiaoping was transformed from a patriotic youth into a Marxist. It was the beginning of his revolutionary career. The Chinese Socialist Youth League in Europe published a mimeographed magazine, the Red Light, designed to help the Chinese comrades in France, Belgium and Germany to study theory. Deng not only co-edited and wrote articles for the journal but also cut stencils and did the mimeographing.

Deng returned to China and became a leading political and military organizer in the Kiangsi Soviet, an autonomous communist enclave in southwestern China that had been established by Mao Zedong. Deng participated in the Long March (1934-35) of the Chinese communists to a new base in northwestern China and was a political officer in the communists’ Eighth Route Army throughout its resistance to the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. In 1952, after the communist takeover of China (1949), he became a vice-premier. In 1954 he became secretary-general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and in 1955 a member of the ruling Politburo.

Deng was attacked during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s by radical supporters of Mao. He was branded a “capitalist” and sent for re-education. Having already been dismissed from all his posts, he was taken to Xinjian, to do manual labor at the county’s tractor repairing plant every morning. He worked as a fitter, as he had learned to do in France in his youth, and found himself as proficient at the job as before.

In 1973, however, Deng was reinstated under the sponsorship of Premier Zhou Enlai and made deputy premier, and in 1975 he became vice-chairman of the party’s Central Committee, a member of its Politburo, and chief of the general staff. As effective head of the government during the months preceding the death of Zhou Enlai, he was widely considered the likely successor to Zhou. However, upon Zhou’s death in January 1976, the Gang of Four managed to purge Deng from the leadership once again. It was not until Mao’s death in September 1976 and the consequent fall from power of the Gang of Four that Deng was rehabilitated, this time with the assent of Mao’s chosen successor to the leadership of China, Hua Guofeng.

By July 1977 Deng had returned to his high posts. He struggled with Hua for control of the party and government. Deng’s superior political skills and broad base of support soon led Hua to surrender the premiership and the chairmanship to prot?g?s of Deng in 1980-81. Zhao Ziyang became premier of the government, and Hu Yaobang became general secretary of the CCP; both men looked to Deng for guidance.

From this point on, Deng proceeded to carry out his own policies for the economic development of China. Operating through consensus, compromise, and persuasion, Deng engineered important reforms in virtually all aspects of China’s political and economic life. He instituted decentralized economic management and rational and flexible long-term planning to achieve efficient and controlled economic growth. China’s peasant farmers were given individual control over and responsibility for their production and profits, a policy that resulted in greatly increased agricultural production within a few years of its initiation in 1981.

Deng stressed individual responsibility in the making of economic decisions, material incentives as the reward for industry and initiative, and the formation of cadres of skilled, well-educated technicians and managers to spearhead China’s development. He freed many industrial enterprises from the control and supervision of the central government and gave factory managers the authority to determine production levels and to pursue profits for their enterprises. In foreign affairs, Deng strengthened China’s trade and cultural ties with the West and opened up Chinese enterprises to foreign investment.

Deng eschewed the most conspicuous leadership posts in the party and government. But he was a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo, and he retained control of the armed forces by virtue of his being chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission. He was also a vice-chairman of the CCP. Owing both to his posts and to the weight and authority of his voice within the party, he remained China’s chief policymaker throughout the 1980s.

In order to resolve the questions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao and to reunify China, Deng formulated the concept of “one country, two systems”. The concept is an important part of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Since 1984 the Hong Kong and Macao questions have been solved on this basis, and Deng concludes deal for the return of Hong Kong in 1997 (after 155 years). It was imaginative, daring and unorthodox. It was an issue not only of supreme importance to China in its quest to regain national wholeness. It was also of international concern because of what Hong Kong had become under the British, its key role in Asian economic development and as a model for China in the coming century.

Deng believed that the same approach could be used to resolve the Taiwan question and perhaps other similar international issues as well. The concept of “one country, two systems” has had considerable impact both in China and abroad. This is one example of Deng’s application of the principle of seeking truth from facts to the solution of complicated practical problems.

In 1987 Deng stepped down from the CCP’s Central Committee, thereby relinquishing his seat on the Politburo and its dominant Standing Committee. By so doing he compelled similar retirements by many aged party leaders who had remained opposed or resistant to his reforms. Hu Yaobang was forced to resign his position as general secretary in 1987. Deng resigned his chairmanship of the Military Commission on Nov. 9, 1989, but, though lacking any formal post in the communist leadership, he retained ultimate authority in the party.

Deng Xiaoping was a man of broad vision who thinks in terms of world issues and has devoted much energy over the years to foreign relations. He has visited many foreign countries and met with many foreign guests, always with a view to securing a peaceful international environment for China’s socialist modernization. He was personally responsible for formulating China’s independent foreign police, which in essence consists of standing firmly on the side of the people of the Third World countries, opposing hegeminism and trying to preserve world peace. Deng holds that peace and development are the two overriding issues in the world today. He believes that the danger of war still exists but that the forces that can deter war are growing. China, he is convinced, can make an important contribution both to world peace and to steady economic development.

Deng Xiaoping had stressed all along that it is of strategic importance to bring younger people into positions of leadership and that the destiny of the Party and the state hinges on this question. He has stood firmly for abolishing permanent tenure in leading posts and has taken the lead in this connection. When new leading bodies were elected at the Party’s Thirteenth National Congress and the First Plenary Session of the Thirteenth Central Committee, he withdrew his candidacy for membership in the Central Committee and its Political Bureau, accepting only reappointment as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. However, with his high prestige and profound wisdom he will continue to play a great role in making major policy decisions of the Party and the state.

On February 19 Deng Xiaoping died.. Through a lifetime of service to the people, Deng Xiaoping has earned the respect and affection of millions of his compatriots.

Tag: Deng Xiao Ping (1904 - 1997)