Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese politician, statesman, theorist, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, he nonetheless served as the paramount leader
of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to the early 1990s.
Born into a peasant background in Guang'an, Sichuan, Empire of the Great Qing of China Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he came under the influence of Marxism. He joined the Communist Party of China in
1923. Upon his return to China he worked as a political commissar in
rural regions and was considered a "revolutionary veteran" of the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet and
other southwestern regions to consolidate Communist control. He was
also instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies were at odds with the political ideologies of Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution but regained prominence in 1978 by outmaneuvering Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng.
Inheriting
a country wrought with social and institutional woes resulting from the
Cultural Revolution and other mass political movements of the Mao era,
Deng became the core of the "second generation" of Chinese leadership. He is considered "the architect" of a new brand of socialist thinking, having developed Socialism with Chinese characteristics and led Chinese economic reform through a synthesis of theories that became known as the "socialist market economy".
Deng opened China to foreign investment, the global market, and limited
private competition. He is generally credited with advancing China into
one of the fastest growing economies in the world for over thirty years and vastly raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese.
