“Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”

“Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China” – Ezra F. Vogel, 2013

Ezra Vogel’s “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China” is an admiring profile of the twentieth century leader who reinvented China’s failed planned economy to become one of the world’s fastest developing modern nations, while still retaining political continuity as a one-party communist regime.  The book helps explain how Deng oversaw a combination of increasing economic freedom while maintaining limited political freedom, the apparent contradiction by which the West often summarizes China.  Deng was a practical strategist whose revolutionary idealism was grounded in a fact-based approach.  In contrast to Mao, whom he succeeded as Leader of the Communist Party after pushing aside Hua Guofeng, Deng studied problems objectively, with evidence as much as ideology guiding analysis.  He admitted China’s shortcomings, borrowed from other nation’s technological experience, and partnered with international capitalists to import materials and expertise. Under his tenure, the disastrous collectivization of agriculture was wound down. The economy was opened to market forces and experimental (and successful) economic zones were created.  Government bureacracy was made more efficient and flexible, more able to respond to the realities and consequences of policy.  Agrarian physical labor was deromanticized, with a new emphasis on science, technology, and intellectualism as legitimate forms of revolutionary work.  And despite ordering the violent crackdown at Tiananmen  Square which came to symbolize the Chinese government’s suppression of democracy to the rest of the world in the late 20^th century, Vogel chronicles how Deng was viewed as a reformer in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, how he reintroduced meritocracy and reinvigorated China’s universities, expanded diversity of opinion in public discourse, and opened China to the West.  He did not, however, stray from supporting the communist party as the only political option throughout this transformation.  Instead he restructured party systems of decision making and replaced personnel to enable his vision of progress, comfortable with the conception of authoritarian control of the nation as the best way forward.

Western societies, and perhaps the United States in particular, tend to view long-term stability as a product of an open democracy where all ideas can be debated, but stability is not enshrined like democracy, as an ideal in and of itself.  Deng, in comparison, prioritized stability over freedom as he executed reforms, restructured leadership, and moved away from Mao’s vision.  Vogel quotes Deng as saying democracy “is only a means [to an end]. ”  He may have said the same about communism.  Deng seems to have viewed his revolution’s Marxist-Leninist roots as a path to unite a massive and diverse nation towards shared prosperity, as opposed to a strict economic blueprint.  Vogel’s exhaustive depiction makes clear that Deng in fact did advocate for a more open society which would not recreate the unquestioning, despotic environment which led to slaughter and starvation under the cult of Mao.  Deng himself suffered “reeducation”, banishment, and demotion due to his opinions several times over the course of his career.  However, Deng also strove to avoid the chaos and absence of a dependable rule of law which Mao’s leadership engendered.  Additionally, he saw the Soviet people’s loss of faith in the party after Khrushchev’s critiques of Stalin as a warning against undermining a revolution through dissent.  To Deng, democracy led to splintering and unnecessary competition in a nation that desperately needed collective effort to progress.  Western conceptions of individual liberty and democracy may also have rang hollow as a young Xiaoping witnessed exploitation by foreign powers in China, and racism while living as a student in France.

The depiction of Soviet leadership in “Bloodlands” differs greatly from that of the Chinese in “Deng Xiaoping”.  Vogel is admiring of Deng’s accomplishments, and comes across as neutral if not sympathetic to decisions including censorship of literature and film, removal of liberal university faculty, and of course the use of deadly force against protestors in 1989, contextualizing them in Deng’s overall arc of reform.  Vogel also downplays Deng’s role in orchestrating Mao’s purges and horrific “revolutionary” class warfare policies, mentioning them in less detail and using them to explain Deng’s lean away from Mao.   Snyder’s book is more like a list of atrocities with gruesome details of how people died, and what they did to survive, as a primary point of his history. It is a condemnation of the tragedies that occurred in parts of Eastern Europe before and during World War II. However, both authors cover histories which are popularly viewed, at least in the West, as inexplicable beyond perhaps the psychopathy and paranoia of national leaders.  Both attempt to explain the circumstances which made the events possible.

Vogel explains how Deng navigates China away from self-destruction and towards modernization and global participation without severe disruption or discontinuity.  The book begs further study of pre-communist China, and the conditions which gave rise to a successful revolution.  Deng manages an amazing feat in connecting his transition back to Mao’s vision.  What were the circumstances at the beginning of the 20^th century such that a massive nation was willing to overthrow its ruling powers, turn on itself in the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, and not only survive as a nation but continue its revolution, albeit greatly transformed, to the present day?