Portal:1980s/Selected biography/38
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997), was a Chinese revolutionary and statesman. He was the paramount leader of China from 1978 until his retirement in 1992. After Mao Zedong's death, Deng led his country through far-reaching market-economy reforms. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary (that is, the leader of the Communist Party), he nonetheless was considered the "paramount leader" of the People's Republic of China from December 1978 to 1992. As the core of the second-generation leaders, Deng shared his power with several powerful older politicians commonly known as the Eight Elders.
Born into a peasant background in Guang'an, Sichuan province, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he was influenced by Marxism-Leninism. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1923. Upon his return to China he worked as a political commissar for the military in rural regions and was considered a "revolutionary veteran" of the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet and other southwestern regions to consolidate Communist control.
Deng was a major supporter of Mao Zedong in the early 1950s. As the party's Secretary-General, Deng became instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies, however, were at odds with Mao's political ideologies. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution, but regained prominence in 1978 by outmaneuvering Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng.
Inheriting a country fraught with social and institutional woes resulting from the Cultural Revolution and other political movements of the Mao era, Deng became the pre-eminent figure of the "second generation" of Chinese leadership. He is considered "the architect" of a new brand of socialist thinking, combining the Communist Party's socialist ideology with a pragmatic adoption of market economy practices. Deng opened China to foreign investment and the global market, and encouraged private competition. He is generally credited with developing China into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world for over 35 years and raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. (Full article...)