Deng Xiaoping Changed China Author: Ezra Vogel Publisher: Commonwealth Publishing House

Deng Xiaoping has profoundly influenced the course of contemporary Chinese and world history. To understand Deng Xiaoping's political career and the logic of his behavior is to understand contemporary China and the historical puzzle behind his personal destiny.

Deng Xiaoping, who was described by Mao Zedong as a "needle hidden in cotton", was the main driving force behind China's dramatic changes in the late 20th century. After the ten-year catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, he ended the Mao Zedong myth, loosened the long-rigid economic and social policies, opened up trade with the West, and "crossed the river by feeling the stones" to eventually allow some Chinese people to get rich first. However, he did not forget to consolidate the authority of the Communist Party. The most criticized thing was that in June 1989, he ordered the suppression of the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

In the 50 years since he rose to the pinnacle of power after three ups and downs, he was repeatedly purged and even exiled, and finally became China's top leader from 1978 to 1989, and returned again in 1992. When Deng Xiaoping was in power, he saw China's biggest opportunity for creative destruction in half a century, and he seized it without hesitation to establish a new economic system.

If you want to understand modern China, you must know the Deng Xiaoping era.