Deng
A Political Biography
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- $92.99
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- $92.99
Publisher Description
A comprehensive exposition of the life of Deng Xiaoping, the pre-eminent leader of late 20th-century China, from his birth in 1904 to the present. Written by an insider, this study is notable for the detail it provides on elite-level Chinese Communist Party politics and Deng's changing relations with his party colleagues in the jockying for power that constitutes a significant aspect of CCP politics. This biography combines intimate details, and the sweep of history that encompasses the struggles of 20th-century China. This text provides both political and personal information that may be of interest to students of Chinese history, as well as providing an insight into the man who has influenced the social, political, and economic development of China.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this academic but vivid biography, Chinese scholar and Harvard research fellow Yang profiles Deng Xiaoping (1904-1995) as a shrewd, resourceful politician who came to power through his constant sharp appraisal of Mao's state of mind. Filled with ever-deepening contempt for Mao's benighted policies, Deng turned millions of landless peasants into landowners; yet, as China's absolute ruler, he lacked the hands-on control to follow through on his economic modernizations, in Yang's estimate. The author, a schoolmate of Deng's two sons at Beijing University and a Red Guard comrade of one of them during the Cultural Revolution, evinces restrained admiration for Deng's reformist drive, though he doesn't let us forget the sins and shortcomings of a dictator who, 32 years before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, launched a massive purge that sent close to a million "rightists"--liberals, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, pro-democracy leaders--to labor camps and death. Besides offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the Communist Party's internecine power struggles, this biography, written with a Chinese brand of playful irony, is peppered with dramatic personal glimpses, as when Deng's common-law wife Ah Jin denounced him before a 1933 party congress and declared that she was "cutting off relations" with him.
