![]() ![]() But the applause showed that the delegates liked him better as an architect that they had ever liked Mao as a helmsman. He made no speech and did not stay for long. "Deng was able to savour his triumph when, carefully watched by Deng Rong, he walked slowly down an aisle of the congress hall on the final day of the meeting. Since he actually died in 1976, there is nothing we can do about it.'" (quoting Deng, 249) However, his achievements were still very good. ![]() Had he died in 1966, his meritorious achievements would have been somewhat tarnished. "'Had chairman Mao died in 1956, there would have been no doubt that he was a great leader of the Chinese people. He knew too that he would stand to lose in the political warfare which was bound to follow Mao's death by saying anything critical about his own behaviour since 1973." (207) His calculation, no doubt, was that Mao could not live for much longer and that, once he had died, no one would have the authority to get his friends to to suggest to him that he should humiliate himself. "In 1966, he had agreed to make a humiliating statement of self-criticsm in 1976, when put under pressure (by Mao himself, through Ye Jianying) to do so again, he steadfastly refused. It was a view with which Deng Xiaoping was to take bitter issue." (143) "Its most famous saying was that a socialist train which ran late was better than a capitalist train which ran to time. Even in the 1980s, when he received scores of foreign visitors, it was his habit on all but the most formal occasions to clear his throat and spit when speaking." (116) "His style was forthright and his manners were plain. ? They certainly inoculated him against the sinocentrism which was so marked a feature in the outlook of Mao Zedong - and all of the other Chinese communist leaders, like Lin Biao, who never lived abroad." (23) "How did Deng's years in France affect him. The book, however, is very weak about the economic transformation and foreign policy that Deng promoted. Now it is all about evil machinations of Mao (with an extra emphasis on his love affairs, unpleasant body odour and ugly teeth to represent him as displeasing as possible), massacres of the Chinese state etc. Once China the cheap labour El Dorado was transformed into China the global superpower, Western scholars' all pretence at impartiality went out the window, and books like Lovell's Maoism was quick to side with the new cold warriors. Therefore Evans' account has this cheerful air of impartiality towards Chinese revolution and politicians, which has become very rare nowadays as China decided to act as a superpower. All in the name of Marxism-Leninism.īack in 1995, when this book was published China was hardly a threat but a carnival ground for victorious Western capital. This included friendly relations with US, aiding Afghani mujahideen against USSR and opening free trade zones with cheap Chinese labour. This was a solid, well structured account of Deng Xiaoping, the man who who introduced in China "a socialism with Chinese characteristics". Reader has to navigate through all Li-s, Hu-s, Chang-s, Zhang-s to make sense of country's history. Wow, apparently Chinese revolution produced more politicians and conspiracies than all the world revolutions combined. ![]()
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