Deng Xiaoping, 1904 –1997
The Politics of Openness
Personal note• I studied Mao’s China as a young geography student with Keith
Buchanan at VUW in late 1960s • Keith McPherson Buchanan, Emeritus Professor and first Professor of
Geography at Victoria University• “Buchanan was a prolific writer, polemicist, reviewer and
commentator. His work includes nine books plus two co-authored volumes, well over 200 articles and comments, and a very large number of book reviews. As a radical geographer, a socialist, a champion of the dispossessed, and an unrelenting critic of orthodoxy, capitalist regimes and power elites, Buchanan was always controversial. His work represents a powerful case directed against some of the great evils and dangerous trends shaping the later twentieth century world.” Ray Watters
Keith Buchanan
• The Chinese people & the Chinese earth, 1966• The transformation of the Chinese earth:
aspects of the evaluation of the Chinese earth from earliest times to Mao Tse-tung, 1970
• What would Keith make of Deng Xiaoping?
DENG XIAOPINGpreliminary
"To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China.”
• As a revolutionary nationalist Deng Xiaoping wanted to see China standing on equal terms with the great global powers. He developed a brand of pragmatism famously summed up in his 1962 slogan-- "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat as long as it catches mice”—that served as a motto for “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” For Deng the very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems. His policy reforms of “opening up” (改革开放 ) beginning in the late 1970s was responsible for the decollectivization of agriculture, the privatization and contracting out of state-owned enterprises and the growth of the market economy, a process that lead to China joining the WTO in 2001.
邓先圣邓希贤born as Deng Xiansheng into a
landlord family in Guang'an District, Sichuan province
Early Years
• "To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China.”
• 1920 France to study• 1921 he joined the
Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe
• 1924 Moscow• 1927 returned to China• Joined Feng Yuxiang
Chinese Nationalism
• "Deng Xiaoping and many like him [in the Chinese Communist Party] 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."
Biography
• 1927-29 resided in Wuhan; first contact with Mao• secretary of Party Committee in Shanghai 1931.• Long March 1934; Mao head of Communist Party• 1937 Japanese invasion• 1945 traveled to Chongqing• Mayor of Chongqing, 1949• 1952 Deputy Premier and Vice President of the Committee on Finance in Beijing
BAISEYears in Baise; based on personal photographs taken in 2010
Street entrance
Entrance
Interior Courtyard
Balcony
Interior
Map
Map closeup
Meeting
Table
Detail
Detail
detail
detail
Fish detail
Fresco
Fresco
Fresco
Deng Xiaoping
DENG’S PRAGMATISMReworking Mao’s legacy
Deng’s pragmatism, 1962
• "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat as long as it catches mice”
Cultural Revolution• Launch of Cultural revolution
against Deng’s economic reformism
• Targeted by Red Guards• Zhou's choice as successor• returned to politics in 1974 as
First Vice-Premier• Attack by Gang of Four• Self-criticisms• Criticize Deng and Oppose the
Rehabilitation of Right-leaning Elements
Emergence as leader• Deng gradually emerged as the de facto leader of China
following Mao's death on 9 September 1976.• repudiated the Cultural Revolution• Met with Lee Kuan Yew in 1978• The Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee,
1979• commune system was gradually dismantled• China's economy opened to foreign trade• US recognizes CPRC• 1980 discussion for return of HK (by 1997)• 1987 Deng Xiaoping was re-elected as Chairman of CMC
The socialist market
• The social market economy
• The socialist economy• The socialist market
economy
Socialist Market Economy
SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
Deng argued that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that the duty of the party was to perfect so-called “socialism with Chinese characteristics”
“In the process of reform and opening up, we must be a little more courageous...”
“Socialism with Chinese characteristics”
• interpretation of Maoism reduced the role of ideology in economic decision-making
• the market economy happens under socialism, too• political flexibility towards the foundations of socialism• The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of
the productive systems• Socialism and market economy are not incompatible• few of the economic reforms that Deng introduced were originated
by Deng himself• The bottom-up approach of the Deng reforms, in contrast to the
top-down approach of perestroika, was likely a key factor in the success of the former.
Deng’s policies
• Deng's reforms sparked an industrial revolution in China
• a reversal of the Maoist policy of economic self-reliance
• Special Economic Zones
改革开放• Reform and opening up
First & second stages
• The first stage (late 1970s and early 1980s) • the decollectivization of agriculture• the opening up of the country to foreign investment permission for entrepreneurs to set up
• The second stage (1990s)• Privatization & contracting out of SOE• Lifting price controls, removing protectionst policies• Growth of private sector (70% of GDP in 2004)
Selected Works
80th Birthday
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Ezra F. Vogel
Ezra F. Vogel’s assessment• Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of
cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square.
China’s Transformation of China• Under Deng’s watch, Vogel writes, China transformed from a
country with an annual trade of barely $10 billion to one whose trade expanded 100-fold. During his early years, Deng pleaded with the United States to take a few hundred Chinese students. Since then, 1.4 million have gone to study overseas. More than any other world leader, Deng embraced globalization, allowing his country to benefit from it more than any other nation. He also set the basis for a world-shaking demographic transition — by 2015, more than half of China’s population will live in cities — that will dwarf all the massive population shifts due to wars and uprisings in China’s past.
Video Interview
• NEW YORK, October 4, 2011 — Historian Ezra Vogel discusses his new biography of Deng Xiaoping, and Deng's singular place in modern Chinese history, with Orville Schell, Director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. (59 min., 54 sec.)
• http://asiasociety.org/video/countries/ezra-vogel-deng-xiaoping-complete
Top Related