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Book SynopsisDeng Xiaoping joined the Chinese Communist movement as a youth and rose in its ranks to become an important lieutenant of Mao''s from the 1930s onward. Two years after Mao''s death in 1976, Deng became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party and the prime architect of China''s post-Mao reforms. Abandoning the Maoist socio-economic policies he had long fervently supported, he set in motion changes that would dramatically transform China''s economy, society, and position in the world. Three decades later, we are living with the results. China has become the second largest economy and the workshop of the world. And while it is essentially a market economy (socialism with Chinese characteristics), Deng and his successors ensured the continuation of CCP rule by severely repressing the democratic movement and maintaining an iron grip on power. When Deng died at the age of 92 in 1997, he had set China on the path it is following to this day.Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine''s ne
Trade ReviewThe best biography of the man who, along with Mao, was China's dominant statesman of the 20th century. * Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Week *
Like the heroes of a Hollywood Western riding into town to clean up a mess, Pantsov and Levine have swept into the unruly genre of contemporary Chinese biography. Pantsov contends with Soviet archives, while Levine wrangles Chinese-language materials and secondary sources in English. Both bring prodigious energy and research firepower to their work." -Foreign Affair
Pantsov and Levine do well to highlight Deng's studied indifference to the endemic and flagrant corruption that his reforms occasioned... Commendable work. * Jeffrey Crean, Journal of American-East Asian Relations *
Table of ContentsCast of Characters Note on the Spelling of Chinese Words Introduction PART ONE - THE BOLSHEVIK 1 Born in the Year of the Dragon 2 From Paris to Moscow: The Lessons of Bolshevism 3 From Xi'an to Shanghai 4 The Guangxi Experiment PART TWO - THE MAOIST 5 'The Spirit of Five Fearlessness' 6 Master of the Taihang Mountains 7 At the Forefront of the New Democratic Revolution 8 Chief of the Southwest Region 9 The Beijing Hippodrome 10 'Critique of the Cult of Personality' and Its Consequences 11 'A Great Growing Force' 12 Being and Consciousness 13 'Yellow Cat, Black Cat' 14 'No. 2 Capitalist Roader' 15 Arrest and Exile PART THREE - THE PRAGMATIST 16 'Soft as Cotton, Sharp as a Needle' 17 New Trials 18 Practice as the Criterion of Truth 19 The Cardinal Principles 20 'Let Some Families Get Rich First' 21 One Country, Two Systems 22 Reforms and Democracy 23 The Tiananmen Tragedy 24 A Retired Patriarch Epilogue Acknowledgments Illustration Credits Bibliography Appendix 1: Deng Xiaoping's Chronology Appendix 2: Deng Xiaoping's Genealogy Notes Index
