Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674257413

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.


Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674257413

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.


Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Belknap Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674725867

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.


China and Japan

China and Japan
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674240766

A Financial Times “Summer Books” Selection “Will become required reading.” —Times Literary Supplement “Elegantly written...with a confidence that comes from decades of deep research on the topic, illustrating how influence and power have waxed and waned between the two countries.” —Rana Mitter, Financial Times China and Japan have cultural and political connections that stretch back fifteen hundred years, but today their relationship is strained. China’s military buildup deeply worries Japan, while Japan’s brutal occupation of China in World War II remains an open wound. In recent years both countries have insisted that the other side must openly address the flashpoints of the past before relations can improve. Boldly tackling the most contentious chapters in this long and tangled relationship, Ezra Vogel uses the tools of a master historian to examine key turning points in Sino–Japanese history. Gracefully pivoting from past to present, he argues that for the sake of a stable world order, these two Asian giants must reset their relationship. “A sweeping, often fascinating, account...Impressively researched and smoothly written.” —Japan Times “Vogel uses the powerful lens of the past to frame contemporary Chinese–Japanese relations...[He] suggests that over the centuries—across both the imperial and the modern eras—friction has always dominated their relations.” —Sheila A. Smith, Foreign Affairs


Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping
Author: Michael Dillon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2014-10-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 085773539X

One of the most important figures in global politics during the second half of the 20th century; Deng Xiaoping is generally considered the central figure behind China's economic liberalization programme that produced historically unprecedented growth rates and development beginning in the late 1970s. Lifting nearly a billion people out of poverty, Deng Xiaoping's 'Four Modernisations' called for reform in agriculture, industry, military, and science and technology. Today these reforms are considered to be the crucial turning point in modern Chinese history, enabling China to effectively harness its previously-latent power in its quest to become a global economic superpower. Just ten years after this tremendous achievement, Deng's brutal suppression of the democracy movement at Tiananmen Square severely undermined his international and domestic reputation. To explain the seeming contradictions between Deng Xiaoping's desire for economic liberalization and political conservatism, Michael Dillon's biography utilizes recently-released Chinese sources to detail Deng Xiaoping's emergence from a minority, second-class community in the Sichuan province, via education in France, to his meteoric rise to the top of the CCP's political hierarchy, illustrating the ways in which his life of struggle and survival shaped his political career. Dillon's biography addresses Xiaoping as both an intensely committed communist capable of playing a principal role in the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1961, while incurring the wrath of Mao only ten years later as he was exiled and purged during the Cultural Revolution. Emphasizing Deng Xiaoping's effectiveness as a party operator and political bruiser rather than an intellectual capable of formulating the reforms for which he eventually took credit, this book sheds light on Deng's ability to capitalize upon the planning expertise of other party members. This biography of the central figure in China's economic liberalization is essential for any reader interested in or affected by China's rise to global prominence.


Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping
Author: Alexander Pantsov
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2015
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 019939203X

This book covers the entire life of Deng Xiaoping. Starting with his childhood and student years to the post-Tiananmen era.


One Step Ahead in China

One Step Ahead in China
Author: Ezra F. Vogel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 1989
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674639119

One Step Ahead in China is a groundbreaking book, unique in its detailed coverage of Guangdong, the first socialist dragon to follow in the path of South Korea and Taiwan. 6 maps, 7 tables.


The Nanxun Legacy And China's Development In The Post-deng Era

The Nanxun Legacy And China's Development In The Post-deng Era
Author: John Wong
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2001-06-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9814491136

In the spring of 1992, Deng Xiaoping made a historical tour of south China, popularly known as the Nanxun (”southern tour”). During the tour, he boldly called for more radical economic reform and further opening up of China. The Nanxun has become a political landmark in the history of the People's Republic of China, much like great events such as the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Deng Xiaoping has left his own legacy for the country. The Nanxun belongs to Deng, just as the 1911 revolution belongs to Sun Yat-sen and the communist revolution to Mao Zedong.In this collection of articles, leading China scholars and experts analyze how the Nanxun has sparked off dynamic economic growth in China and drastically changed the political and social landscape of the country.


The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms

The Paradox of China's Post-Mao Reforms
Author: Merle Goldman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 470
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674654532

China's bold program of reforms launched in the late 1970s--the move to a market economy and the opening to the outside world--ended the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution and sparked China's unprecedented economic boom. Yet, while the reforms made possible a rising standard of living for the majority of China's population, they came at the cost of a weakening central government, increasing inequalities, and fragmenting society. The essays of Barry Naughton, Joseph Fewsmith, Paul H. B. Godwin, Murray Scot Tanner, Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O'Brien, Tianjian Shi, Martin King Whyte, Thomas P. Bernstein, Dorothy J. Solinger, David S. G. Goodman, Kristen Parris, Merle Goldman, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko analyze the contradictory impact of China's economic reforms on its political system and social structure. They explore the changing patterns of the relationship between state and society that may have more profound significance for China than all the revolutionary movements that have convulsed it through most of the twentieth century.