Deng Biography

choi

Re: Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and Transformation of China. Hargvard University Press, 2011.
The following will be the third to fifth book reviews I introduce to you.

(1) Howard French, Surviving Mao, Revamping a Nation; The modernization of a backward country, yes, but what was his role in the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward?  Wall Street Journal, Oct 22, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 14961800108204.html

(2) David Barboza, The Man Who Took Modernity To China. New York Times, Oct 22, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/2 ... g%20ezra&st=cse
(interview with teh author)

Quote: David Shambaugh, a leading China scholar who teaches at George Washington University: “This book pushes our knowledge of Deng further. And while much of this information is not necessarily new, this is the first time we’ve seen it all in one place, analyzed with scholarly detachment.

(3) Jonathan Mirsky, How Deng Did It. New York Times, Oct 23, 2011 (Book Review section of Sunday Times)

Quote:

"Vogel observes that Mao’s immediate successor, Hua Guofeng, was the initiator of the reforms.

"Deng came from a small-landlord family in Sichuan Province, yet his formal education, apart from his time at a local school when he was a child, consisted mainly of a single year, 1926, of ideological indoctrination at Sun Yatsen University in Moscow.

"After Paris and Moscow, Deng went back to China, and before long had ceased being “a cheerful, fun-loving extrovert.” He commanded a small force against warlords, was defeated and may have run away.

"after the Communist triumph in 1949, he served as party commissar for the army that occupied Tibet, although he seems not to have set foot there. In the southwest Deng organized the land reform program of 1949-51 'that would wipe out the landlord class.' Mao praised Deng 'for his success . . . killing some of the landlords.' (As part of a national campaign in which two million to three million were killed, 'some' seems an inadequate word.)

"As for the Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, when as many as 45 million people starved to death, Vogel provides no evidence that Deng objected to Mao’s monomaniacal policies. Frank Dikötter’s well-documented book 'Mao’s Great Famine,' however, shows that Deng ordered the extraction of grain from starving peasants for the cities and export abroad.

"And following Deng’s view that corruption crackdowns limit growth, many officials, Vogel writes, 'found ways not only to enrich China, but also to enrich themselves.' The result, he says, is that China is more corrupt than ever and its environment more polluted.

"While Deng believed that science and technology were important — as have many Chinese reformers since the late 19th century — he feared that the humanities and social sciences could be seedbeds of heterodoxy; he never hesitated in punishing intellectuals, whose divergent views could “lead to demonstrations that disrupt public order.”

"Vogel’s account of the crackdown is largely accurate, although he omits the shooting down on Sunday morning of many parents milling about at the edge of the square, searching for their children.

"He [Ezra] states flatly that 'Deng was not vindictive.' If he means Deng didn’t order his adversaries and critics killed, that is true — as far as individuals are concerned. But Deng never shrank, either in Mao’s time or his own, from causing the murder of large numbers of anonymous people.

"In the end, what shines out from Vogel’s wide-ranging biography is the true answer to his two questions: for most of his long career Deng Xiaoping did less FOR China than he did TO it.

Note: The "unswerving" in "unswervingly disciplined":

(adj):  
"1: not swerving or turning aside
2: steady, unfaltering <unswerving loyalty>"
www.m-w.com