Deng Xiaoping and the transformation of China Vogel, Ezra F.

Table of Contents

Map: China in the 1980s
Preface: In Search of Deng
Introduction: The Man and His Mission

Deng’s Background
1. From Revolutionary to Builder to Reformer, 1904–1969

Deng’s Tortuous Road to the Top, 1969–1977
2. Banishment and Return, 1969–1974
3. Bringing Order under Mao, 1974–1975
4. Looking Forward under Mao, 1975
5. Sidelined as the Mao Era Ends, 1976
6. Return under Hua, 1977–1978

Creating the Deng Era, 1978–1980
7. Three Turning Points, 1978
8. Setting the Limits of Freedom, 1978–1979
9. The Soviet-Vietnamese Threat, 1978–1979
10. Opening to Japan, 1978
11. Opening to the United States, 1978–1979
12. Launching the Deng Administration, 1979–1980

The Deng Era, 1978–1989
13. Deng’s Art of Governing
14. Experiments in Guangdong and Fujian, 1979–1984
15. Economic Readjustment and Rural Reform, 1978–1982
16. Accelerating Economic Growth and Opening, 1982–1989
17. One Country, Two Systems: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Tibet
18. The Military: Preparing for Modernization
19. The Ebb and Flow of Politics

Challenges to the Deng Era, 1989–1992
20. Beijing Spring, April 15–May 17, 1989
21. The Tiananmen Tragedy, May 17–June 4, 1989
22. Standing Firm, 1989–1992
23. Deng’s Finale: The Southern Journey, 1992

Deng’s Place in History
24. China Transformed
Key People in the Deng Era
Chinese Communist Party Congresses and Plenums, 1956–1992

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.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674725867