Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Abstract

Ezra Vogel, Deng and the Transformation of China, Cambridge, MA, and London, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011, 876 pp.Harvard University professor Ezra Vogel is one of the few major American experts who have a deep knowledge of both contemporary China and Japan. His works on Japan, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America(1979), and on China, One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (1989), have impressed generations of students as well as political and economic decision-makers and transformed contemporary Asia's image among the Western public.His biography of Deng has similar ambitions. Reflecting on a subject that could Americans understand key developments in Asia in the early twenty-first century (Preface, p. xi), he declares unhesitatingly: The biggest issue in is China, and the man who most influenced China's modern trajectory is Deng Xiaoping (p. xi). From this certainty stem both the qualities and criticism that can be raised about this book.There already are many biographies on Deng in English: by Harrison E. Salisbury (1992), Ruan Ming (1992), Richard Evans (1994), Benjamin Yang (1998), and Michael Marti (2002), as well as special issues of journals devoted to contemporary China, including China Quarterly(1993) and China Perspectives (1997), from which Vogel has drawn generously. But Vogel's biography of the Helmsman is to date the most accomplished and comprehensive. Unlike previous biographies, he has profited from the passage of time since Deng's death in 1997 and has been able to draw upon several works in Chinese published in recent years on Deng's life and public activities. There are, of course, new editions of the Chronicles of Deng Xiaoping'sThoughts(1)for the1904-1974 period, as well as those covering 1974-1997, published in 2009 and 2004 respectively by the CCP Central Document Research Office. Although very formal, these collections (nearly 1,400 pages for the two volumes combined) help furnish some important details regarding Deng's public activities, especially between 1949 and 1978. But Vogel has also been able to consult several recent works of historians, Chinese journalists, and, crucially, former colleagues of Deng who have published accounts of their own direct roles in activities alongside the Little Helmsman, especially two works of Yu Guanyuan published in 2004 and 2005.(2) Moreover, he conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with Deng's family members, first and second circle collaborators, and Party historians, as well as foreign leaders and ambassadors who had dealings with China since the 1960s. All told, these interviews represent years of effort from 2006 to 2010, and a quick review of footnotes indicates their relevance to almost the whole of Deng's life.The book's most interesting contributions, as against previous works, concern the eras of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Hua Guofeng interregnum (from Mao's death in September 1976 until December 1978), and the period when economic reforms were being launched - 1978-1984. Not that the rest of the book is uninteresting, but other publications have largely covered the period during which Deng is completely identified with China's history, rendering it less original.For instance, Vogel's book has brought out new elements on the period of internal exile (near Nanchang City in Jiangxi Province) between October 1969 and February 1973, when Deng worked in a tractor spare parts factory. It brings out the extent to which a good deal of Deng's determination to transform China had its origins in this period. Banished from Beijing and having no political role, Deng could see the extent of Maoism's ravages, and during long solitary walks he ruminated over his strategy for change (pp. 52-57).This is likewise the case for the period of Deng's return to work in February 1973 until April 1976, when Mao again removed him from power on accusations of organising popular demonstrations after Zhou Enlai's death. …