Front cover image for Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China

Ezra F. Vogel (Author)
Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist. 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. Deng's youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China's preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao-and he did not hesitate.--From publisher information
eBook, English, 2011
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2011
Biographies
1 online resource (xxiv, 876 pages, 22 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
9780674062832, 0674062833
754841335
From revolutionary to builder to reformer, 1904-1969
Banishment and return, 1969-1974
Bringing order under Mao, 1974-1975
Looking forward under Mao, 1975
Sidelined as the Mao era ends, 1976
Return under Hua, 1977-1978
Three turning points, 1978
Setting the limits of freedom, 1978-1979
The Soviet-Vietnamese threat, 1978-1979
Opening to Japan, 1978
Opening to the United States, 1978-1979
Launching the Deng administration, 1979-1980
Deng's art of governing
Experiments in Guangdong and Fujian, 1979-1984
Economic readjustment and rural reform, 1978-1982
Accelerating economic growth and opening, 1982-1989
One country, two systems: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet
The military: preparing for modernization
The ebb and flow of politics
Beijing spring, April 15-May 17, 1989
The Tiananmen tragedy, May 17-June 4, 1989
Standing firm, 1989-1992
Deng's finale: the southern journey, 1992
China transformed
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011
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