Deng Xiaoping

Yafeng Xia

pp. 137-155

in: Steven Casey, Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental maps in the era of détente and the end of the Cold War 1968–91, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Deng Xiaoping was born in 1904 when China was in the dying years of the Qing dynasty and about 60 years after China was forced to open to Western powers. He died in 1997 when China had been under Communist rule for nearly half a century and had undergone successful capitalistic economic reform for about 20 years. As General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1956 to 1966 and the paramount leader of China from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Deng was one of the world's pre-eminent leaders of the late twentieth century.