Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, by Ezra F. Vogel

Abstract

Journalists may write the first draft of Chinese history. But Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel has written a close second. Only in the past decade or so have historians begun to explore the history of the People’s Republic of China (1949–). The first place to which urban historians turn is Vogel’s Canton under Communism, published in 1969 with limited access to primary sources, which remains one of the best histories of cities during the early years of Communist rule. Likewise, his One Step Ahead, published in 1989, was the first systematic study of the impact of the Reform Era (1978–) on a single Chinese province, Guangdong, the province facing Hong Kong. With the publication of his massive and exhaustively researched biography of Mao Zedong’s successor, Deng Xiaoping (1904–97), Vogel has done it again. This book is a fitting capstone to an illustrious career; it will be the first port of call for historians of the post-Mao era when we begin to write the history of the post-Mao leadership. Early second drafts of history (along with third and fourth drafts) have their flaws. The initial reviews of this book rightly criticise Vogel for his thin coverage of the role of Deng Xiaoping in responding to the demonstrations in 1989, which culminated in the brutal suppression of political dissent, and the hagiographic tone of the work. Subsequent biographies will undoubtedly give more weight to that decision. Also surprising is the paucity of coverage of the first sixty-five years of his life, which receive only forty-five pages of attention. It would have been instructive to learn more, for instance, of the bonds he formed with Mao in those early years—the bonds that would ultimately allow him to return to power after two separate purges. A fuller exploration of Deng’s first sixty-five years may have also explained a central contradiction in his actions. Vogel calls Deng ‘the implementer’ who had ‘always been more practical and realistic’ than Mao (p. 41). But it is difficult to reconcile this depiction with the author’s conclusion that Deng simultaneously saw ‘deep flaws in the system that had produced Mao’ (pp. 44–5).