Chinese communist politician and reformer Deng Xiaoping, the architect of sweeping economic and political reforms that led to the "Chinese economic miracle", improved the living standards of the people and opened China to foreign trade, technology and investment, was born 120 years ago on 22 August 1904.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a symposium to mark the anniversary at the People's Palace in Beijing, where Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and President of China, delivered a speech in which he praised Deng's significance, stressed the importance of promoting socialism with Chinese characteristics, and literally said: "Comrade Deng Xiaoping's life was glorious, it was the life of a warrior, the life of a great man who made extraordinary contributions to the Party, the people, the country, the nation and the world, and his contributions will be recorded in history and inspire future generations."
Deng's reforms have not only changed China, they have affected virtually the whole world. China was one of the countries that did not have economic progress at that time and today it is the second largest economy in the world, after the USA. Who was the man who did all this?
His life is one of the most remarkable stories not only of China but of 20th century world history. He was born in Sichuan province in western China to a landlord family during the imperial era, when China was a "pariah" after the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) and was the target of the great powers, which had an open-door policy towards it, in other words, plundering its mineral wealth while unilaterally enriching itself through trade with it. At 15, Deng enrolled in a work-related study program in France to obtain a Western education. It was this fact that largely determined his future fate.
From 1920 he lived for five years in Marseille, where he studied and worked as a labourer. Under the influence of older students, including the later Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, he became interested in Marxism and in 1922 joined the Chinese Communist Youth League, and two years later joined the Communist Party of China, or its branch in Europe. The latter sent him to Moscow in early 1926 to study at a workers' university organised by the Comintern.
Deng returned to China in 1927 and became political commissar at the Sunjatsen Military Academy. In 1928 he married for the first time, marrying a classmate from Moscow University, Zhang Xiyuan, but she died in childbirth a year later. He was married a second time between 1931 and 1939 to Jin Weiying, but she left him after he fell out of favor for the first time in 1933. His third marriage was to Zhuo Lin, a physics graduate from Peking University, in August 1939. They had five children - three daughters and two sons - and lived together for 58 years.
In the second half of the 1920s, Deng took part in the civil war against the Kuomintang and served as one of the commanders of the so-called Eighth Army in the north during the Japanese aggression (1937-1945). Despite his youth, he ranked as a prominent and respected party leader. When Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China in Beijing on October 1, 1949, Deng was appointed mayor of Chongqing, the city where he had studied in his youth. His respect and power in the Party continued to grow. In 1952 he was called to the capital and soon began to occupy high positions in the government, serving as its vice-chairman and, in addition, as a member of the Central Military Commission.
He supported Mao and served as his chief deputy from 1957-1958, and also supported efforts to combine communist ideology with some elements of private farming. Thanks to the reforms that Deng pushed through with President Liu Shao-chia (Mao was party chairman and army chief at the time), the Chinese economy was relatively quickly "resuscitated" and both gained in popularity as a result. Mao's return to the top of the power pyramid through the Great Cultural (Proletarian) Revolution. Later he had to work for three years as a labourer in a tractor repair shop in Jiangxi province.
However, his inner strength and determination were unbreakable, and in 1972 he was reappointed Deputy Prime Minister. In July 1978, the Central Committee reinstated Deng in all the posts he had to leave, and from then on he was virtually the most powerful man in the country until his death in 1997. In December he set out a plan for Four Modernizations: agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense.
Deng's goal was the rapid and efficient transformation of backward China into an industrial superpower, even at the cost of partially abandoning central planning and state ownership of the means of production. Unlike his peers, he instinctively understood that if China did not adapt, at least partially, to the changes in the world, it would remain on the sidelines forever. He therefore advocated a socialist market economy strategy and opened China to the world market. In the process, he experimented, in his own words, 'like feeling with his foot for the stones in front of him when crossing a river'.
It designated six "special economic zones" and fourteen "coastal development areas" (i.e. major ports), led by Shanghai, into which huge foreign investment flowed between 1980 and 1984. The economy expanded rapidly and the standard of living of the population rose unprecedentedly. The Party did not lose its power; on the contrary, it was strengthened. Today's PRC, communist in the political sense, is often more "capitalist" economically than the West itself, which is why it is so powerful. This is Deng's indisputable and unquestionable political legacy.
Deng Xiaoping died in Beijing on 19 February 1997 at the age of 93. In his memory, a six-metre bronze statue of him was erected on a hill in Lotus Park in downtown Shenzhen. It is Shenzhen that represents the economic miracle that Deng managed: in four decades, it has transformed itself from a poor prefecture of a few thousand people, living mainly on fishing, into an industrial metropolis of more than 20 million people.
gnews.cz-Jana Černá
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