Deng Xiaoping

Where they went

6 related events

1. 1
   1948 – 1949Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin Campaignscommander

   Between September 1948 and January 1949 the People’s Liberation Army won the Liaoshen campaign in the Northeast, the Huaihai campaign around Xuzhou and the Pingjin campaign around Beiping and Tianjin, destroying the Nationalist main forces. Beiping changed hands without a fight.

2. 2
   1957 – 1958Hundred Flowers and the Anti-Rightist Campaignparticipant

   In spring 1957 the Communist Party invited intellectuals to criticise it under the slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”. When criticism grew fierce it turned in June to an Anti-Rightist Campaign in which, by official count, over 550,000 people were labelled “rightists” and lost their jobs or were sent to labour camps.

3. 3
   1960 – 1969Sino-Soviet Splitdiplomat

   Disagreement between China and the Soviet Union over de-Stalinisation and peaceful coexistence led to the withdrawal of Soviet experts in 1960, open polemics in the 1960s and armed clashes on Zhenbao Island in the Ussuri River in 1969. The rift set the stage for China’s opening to the United States.

4. 1966 – 1976Cultural Revolutionrelated figure

   A political movement launched by Mao Zedong in May 1966, claiming that “representatives of the bourgeoisie” had infiltrated the party. Red Guards and rebel factions attacked party organisations and fought one another, and leaders such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping were purged. Society and the economy were convulsed for ten years until the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.

5. 4
   1976Death of Zhou Enlai and the April Fifth Tiananmen Incidentrelated figure

   After Premier Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976, wreaths and poems piled up at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square at the Qingming festival on 4–5 April. When the authorities removed the wreaths crowds protested, and on the night of the 5th militia and police cleared the square. The incident was declared “counter-revolutionary” and Deng Xiaoping was purged again.

6. 5
   1976Death of Mao Zedong and Arrest of the Gang of Fourrelated figure

   Mao Zedong died on 9 September 1976, and a month later, on 6 October, Hua Guofeng, with Ye Jianying and Wang Dongxing, arrested the “Gang of Four” — Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. The Cultural Revolution was effectively over.

People who appear alongside

• Mao Zedong1893 – 1976

  Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party who won the civil war and founded the People’s Republic in 1949, and launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

• Jiang Qing1914 – 1991

  Wife of Mao Zedong, a former Shanghai actress who married him in Yan’an, led the Central Cultural Revolution Group and was arrested in 1976 as one of the “Gang of Four”

• Lin Biao1907 – 1971

  PLA marshal who led the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns and, as defence minister, spread the “Little Red Book”; named Mao’s successor in the 1969 party constitution, he died in a plane crash in Mongolia in 1971

• Zhou Enlai1898 – 1976

  First premier of the People’s Republic of China (1949–1976), long in charge of diplomacy, who arranged Nixon’s 1972 visit

• Hua Guofeng1921 – 2008

  Mao’s chosen successor, who became premier and party chairman in 1976 and had the Gang of Four arrested, but was eased out by Deng Xiaoping after 1978

• Chiang Kai-shek1887 – 1975

  Leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party who unified China through the Northern Expedition and led the Nanjing government through the war with Japan; after losing the civil war he moved to Taiwan and ruled the Republic of China there

• Nikita Khrushchev1894 – 1971

  First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party (1953–1964) who denounced Stalin and preached peaceful coexistence, yet confronted the US over the Berlin Wall and Cuba

• Liu Shaoqi1898 – 1969

  Chairman of the People’s Republic (1959–1968) who led economic readjustment after the Great Leap Forward, but was branded a “capitalist roader” in the Cultural Revolution, expelled from the party and died in detention

Themes this person appears in

• From the Chinese Civil War to the Cultural Revolution1927 – 1976

  From the collapse of the United Front in 1927, through rural bases, the Long March and Yan’an, to the Communists’ victory in the civil war and the founding of the People’s Republic — then land reform, the Great Leap Forward and famine, the Sino-Soviet split and the Cultural Revolution, up to Mao’s death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, while the Nationalist government withdrew to Taiwan