Deng Xiaoping
邓小平
1904–1997
- Chief Architect of Reform and Opening-Up
- Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission (1982–1987)
- Chairman of the CCP Central Military Commission (1981–1989)
- Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee (1978–1983)
- Chief of the General Staff, People's Liberation Army (1975–1976, 1977–1980)
- Vice Premier of the State Council (1973–1976, 1977–1980)
- General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee (1956–1966)
Biography
Three Falls, Three Rises
Deng Xiaoping's political career was defined by extraordinary resilience. Born in 1904 in Sichuan, he joined the Communist Party in France in 1922, returned to China, and rose to become one of the Party's most important organisational leaders. He was first purged during intra-party struggles in the 1930s, rehabilitated, and rose again. He was purged a second time during the Cultural Revolution — stripped of all positions, subjected to struggle sessions, and sent to work in a tractor factory in Jiangxi. He was rehabilitated again under Zhou Enlai's sponsorship in 1973, then purged a third time by the Gang of Four in early 1976 after writing a memo criticising the Cultural Revolution's educational policies. Within months of Mao's death, he was back.
Architect of Reform and Opening-Up
Deng consolidated power gradually between 1978 and 1980, using the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978 as the launching pad for Reform and Opening-Up. He never held the top formal titles — he was never General Secretary or President — but wielded paramount authority as Chairman of the Central Military Commission. His genius lay in creating conditions for economic experimentation while maintaining Party political control. Special Economic Zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and other coastal cities became laboratories for market mechanisms. The household responsibility system dismantled agricultural communes and unleashed rural productivity. By the late 1980s, China's economy was growing at nearly 10% annually.
Tiananmen and the Southern Tour
The suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, which Deng ultimately authorised, cost him and China enormous international goodwill. In the immediate aftermath, reformist momentum stalled as conservatives within the Party reasserted themselves. In early 1992, at age 87, Deng made his famous Southern Tour — visiting Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shanghai, delivering speeches endorsing accelerated market reform and warning that leftism, not rightism, was the main danger facing China. The tour broke the ideological logjam and relaunched China's economic acceleration. It was among the most consequential acts of political communication in modern Chinese history.
Legacy
Deng Xiaoping died in February 1997, months before Hong Kong's handover, an event he had negotiated and badly wanted to witness. His legacy is the transformation of China from an impoverished, isolated country into the world's second-largest economy. The "Deng Xiaoping Theory" — pragmatic market socialism summarised in his aphorism "it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice" — remains official CCP doctrine. His political legacy is more complicated: he bequeathed a system of collective leadership with term limits and orderly succession that Xi Jinping has since dismantled.
Related Events (44)
Founding of the Chinese Soviet Republic
From 7 to 20 November 1931 the First National Soviet Congress met at Yeping in Ruijin, Jiangxi, proclaiming the Provisional Central Government of the Chinese Soviet Republic, adopting an Outline Constitution, a Land Law and a Labour Law, and renaming Ruijin “Ruijing” as its seat. On 27 November the Central Executive Committee elected Mao Zedong chairman, with Xiang Ying and Zhang Guotao as vice-chairmen. The congress was pressed for by the Comintern, whose Far Eastern Bureau drafted its main legal documents. The regime carried out land revolution and elections in the soviet areas of Jiangxi and Fujian in opposition to the Nationalist government in Nanjing, and in 1934, under the fifth encirclement campaign, abandoned Ruijin as the Red Army set out on the Long March.
politicalThe Zunyi Conference
The Zunyi Conference was an enlarged meeting of the CCP Politburo held at Zunyi, Guizhou, from 15 to 17 January 1935, during the Long March. Reviewing the defeat in the fifth anti-encirclement campaign and the heavy losses early in the march, it criticised the military command of Bo Gu and the Comintern adviser Otto Braun (Li De), elected Mao Zedong to the Politburo Standing Committee and abolished the three-man group, leaving Zhu De and Zhou Enlai in military command with Zhou making final decisions. Afterwards Zhang Wentian replaced Bo Gu in overall charge, Mao became Zhou's military assistant, and soon a new three-man group of Zhou, Mao and Wang Jiaxiang was formed. The CCP holds that the conference in fact established Mao's leading position in the Party Centre and the Red Army; because no complete record survives, details such as who attended remain disputed.
politicalThe Hundred Regiments Offensive
The Hundred Regiments Offensive was a large-scale Eighth Route Army offensive against Japanese forces in North China in 1940. On 20 August Eighth Route Army headquarters sent the Shanxi–Chahar–Hebei Military Region, the 129th and 120th Divisions and other units into simultaneous attacks, chiefly against the Zhengtai Railway, followed by assaults on strongpoints and counter-mopping-up operations. Official figures give 105 regiments and more than 200,000 men, 1,824 engagements between 20 August and 5 December, more than 25,000 Japanese and puppet troops killed or wounded, and more than 17,000 Eighth Route Army casualties; the number of regiments, the results and the end date are all disputed. Japanese mopping-up operations then intensified and the base areas shrank sharply. Mao Zedong first called the offensive "exhilarating" but later held that it had exposed Communist strength; from 1945 it repeatedly figured in criticism of Peng Dehuai.
militaryChinese Civil War
The full-scale civil war that resumed in June 1946 ended in barely three years with one of the most dramatic reversals in modern military history. The Nationalist government — with superior numbers, American equipment, and control of China's major cities — was driven from the mainland by the People's Liberation Army. Three decisive campaigns in 1948–1949 destroyed the Nationalist field armies. On 1 October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China in Beijing. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan, where the Republic of China continues to govern.
militaryHuaihai Campaign
The largest and most decisive battle of the Chinese Civil War. Between November 1948 and January 1949, two PLA field armies destroyed over 550,000 Nationalist troops across a vast area of north-central China — eliminating the Nationalist army's capacity to defend the Yangtze River line and opening the road to Nanjing.
militaryCrossing of the Yangtze River
The PLA's crossing of the Yangtze River in April 1949 shattered the Nationalist government's last major defensive line and opened the path to the capture of Nanjing, the Nationalist capital, effectively ending organised Nationalist resistance on the mainland.
militaryGao Gang–Rao Shushi Affair
The Gao Gang–Rao Shushi affair was the first serious political struggle in the CPC leadership after 1949. In 1953 Gao, chairman of the State Planning Commission, and Rao, head of the Organisation Department, criticised Bo Yibo and An Ziwen at national conferences on finance and on organisation, moves seen as aimed at Liu Shaoqi; Gao also lobbied Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun. In February 1954 the Fourth Plenum adopted a resolution on Party unity that criticised the pair without naming them; Gao committed suicide that August. In March 1955 a national Party conference declared them an "anti-Party alliance" and expelled them. Deng said in 1980 that Gao "really had no line"; the case has never been reversed.
politicalEighth National Congress of the CPC
The CPC's Eighth National Congress, held in Beijing from 15 to 27 September 1956, was its first since taking power nationwide. It held that socialist transformation had won a decisive victory and that the principal domestic contradiction was now between the need for rapid economic and cultural development and the inability to meet it; the new Party constitution took Marxism-Leninism as its guide, dropping the 1945 reference to "Mao Zedong Thought", and stressed collective leadership against the cult of the individual. The First Plenum elected Mao Chairman and Deng Xiaoping General Secretary. The congress's view of the principal contradiction was reversed after 1957.
politicalAnti-Rightist Campaign
Following the Hundred Flowers Campaign that encouraged criticism of the Party, Mao launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, labelling an estimated 550,000 to 700,000 intellectuals and officials as "rightists," the majority of whom were sent to labour camps or dispatched to the countryside.
politicalGreat Leap Forward
A mass mobilization campaign aimed at rapidly transforming China from an agrarian economy into a communist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization, resulting in widespread famine.
economicSeven Thousand Cadres Conference
The Seven Thousand Cadres Conference was an enlarged CCP central work conference held in Beijing from January 11 to February 7, 1962, bringing together 7,118 officials from the central government down to the county level to confront the economic collapse and famine caused by the Great Leap Forward. Liu Shaoqi's report attributing the disaster to "30 percent natural disaster, 70 percent man-made error" and Mao Zedong's own self-criticism marked a rare moment of open internal reckoning, while Lin Biao's speech defended Mao. In its aftermath, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping took charge of economic recovery while Mao receded toward the party's "second line" — an arrangement Mao would move to reverse within a few years, making the conference a significant precursor to the Cultural Revolution.
politicalCultural Revolution Begins
From 1966 to 1976, Mao Zedong launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, driven by a combination of genuine ideological conviction — fear of Soviet-style revisionism and capitalist restoration — and the political imperative to reassert control after the Great Leap Forward debacle, purging pragmatic rivals Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Red Guards mobilised to destroy the 'Four Olds' and attack intellectuals, officials, and perceived class enemies; the movement reached its radical peak in the January Storm of 1967. Across ten years and several distinct phases, an estimated one to two million people died from direct violence and tens of millions suffered persecution. The 1981 Party Resolution designated the Cultural Revolution a 'catastrophe' — the gravest historical error since the founding of the People's Republic.
politicalNormalisation of China–Japan Relations
From 25 to 30 September 1972 Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei visited Beijing, and on the 29th he and Zhou Enlai signed the joint communiqué establishing diplomatic relations that day. Japan expressed "deep remorse" for the serious damage its war had caused the Chinese people, recognised the PRC government as the sole legal government of China, and said it "fully understands and respects" China's position on Taiwan; China renounced its claim to war reparations. Japan declared the same day that its peace treaty with Taiwan had ended, Taipei immediately announced the severance of relations, and the two sides thereafter maintained practical ties through private bodies. In 1978 the two countries signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.
diplomaticDeng Xiaoping's First Rehabilitation
Deng Xiaoping, formerly General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution as a 'capitalist roader.' In March 1973, at Premier Zhou Enlai's active urging, he was rehabilitated as Vice-Premier; he assumed increasing administrative responsibilities as Zhou's health declined and worked to advance the Four Modernisations. He was purged a second time in April 1976 in the aftermath of the April Fifth Movement, at the Gang of Four's instigation. Following Mao Zedong's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, Deng was definitively rehabilitated in July 1977 and subsequently led the reform and opening-up policies.
politicalCriticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts
In 1975, while Zhou Enlai lay gravely ill, Deng Xiaoping oversaw a "comprehensive rectification" of the country under Mao's "three directives," bringing marked improvement to Party and state work. When Deng declined to chair a resolution affirming a "seventy-thirty" assessment of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's nephew and Politburo liaison Mao Yuanxin reported his refusal to Mao, who approved a "greeting meeting" on 24 November 1975 that formally launched the "Criticize Deng, Counter the Right-Deviationist Reversal of Verdicts" campaign. After Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976, Hua Guofeng was named acting Premier, and the movement to attack Deng spread nationwide. Public mourning for Zhou at Tiananmen Square in April 1976 was suppressed as the "Tiananmen Incident," after which Deng was stripped of all his posts. The campaign effectively ended with the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in October 1976, and in July 1977 the 3rd Plenum of the 10th Central Committee restored Deng to all his positions.
politicalDeath of Zhou Enlai and April Fifth Movement
Zhou Enlai, Premier of the State Council for twenty-seven years, died on 8 January 1976. Official mourning was restricted, and Mao Zedong did not attend the memorial service. Around the Qingming Festival that spring, large numbers of people gathered spontaneously in Tiananmen Square with wreaths and poems to mourn Zhou, some of which criticised the "Gang of Four". The wreaths were removed on the night of 4 April; the following day large-scale protests broke out and were dispersed, and hundreds were arrested — the April Fifth Movement. The Party Centre then labelled it a "counter-revolutionary incident" and stripped Deng Xiaoping of all his posts. In November 1978 the Beijing Municipal Committee announced the rehabilitation of the Tiananmen Incident.
politicalDeath of Mao Zedong
On 9 September 1976, Mao Zedong — Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and founding leader of the People's Republic of China — died of heart failure in Beijing at the age of eighty-two. He had held paramount power since 1949, leading China through a succession of transformative campaigns including land reform, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. His death ended twenty-seven years of Maoist rule and triggered an intense succession struggle: within less than a month, the pragmatist faction led by Marshal Ye Jianying moved against the radical Gang of Four led by Mao's widow Jiang Qing, resulting in their arrest on 6 October 1976. The fall of the Gang of Four cleared the path for Deng Xiaoping's final rehabilitation and the beginning of the reform and opening-up era.
politicalArrest of the Gang of Four
Less than a month after Mao's death, Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying orchestrated the arrest of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, ending the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution.
politicalCollege Entrance Examination Restored
In October 1977, the State Council approved the restoration of the national unified college entrance examination system (gaokao), which had been suspended for eleven years. Championed personally by Deng Xiaoping as a central element of post-Cultural Revolution rectification, the measure replaced the politically driven, recommendation-based admissions system with open competition on the basis of academic ability. In December 1977, approximately 5.7 million candidates sat for the examination, competing for around 273,000 university places — an acceptance rate of approximately 4.8 per cent. In the following years many sent-down youth entered university through the examination.
Debate on the Criterion of Truth (1978)
On 11 May 1978 Guangming Daily published “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth” under the byline “special commentator”, a day after it appeared in the Central Party School’s internal journal Theoretical Trends. Drafted by the Nanjing University teacher Hu Fuming, revised by Yang Xiguang, Sun Changjiang, Wu Jiang and others and approved by Hu Yaobang, it targeted the “two whatevers” of 1977 by attacking Lin Biao’s “theory of genius”. Criticised by Wang Dongxing and others, it was publicly endorsed by Deng Xiaoping on 2 June, and the debate spread nationwide. The Third Plenum praised the debate and the 1981 Resolution said Hua Guofeng had suppressed it. Officially it is the ideological forerunner of reform and opening; some scholars argue the standard account exaggerates the differences between Hua and Deng.
politicalDemocracy Wall Movement
Citizens posted political manifestos on a wall in Beijing's Xidan district, demanding democratic reforms and human rights; Wei Jingsheng's essay calling for a "Fifth Modernisation" became its defining text before Deng Xiaoping shut the movement down and imprisoned Wei.
politicalThird Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee
Held in Beijing from 18 to 22 December 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP formally shifted the Party's central focus from class struggle to economic modernisation under Deng Xiaoping's direction, inaugurating the era of reform and opening-up.
politicalEstablishment of China–US Diplomatic Relations
On 16 December 1978 (15 December in Washington) China and the United States simultaneously released a joint communiqué announcing that they would recognise each other and establish diplomatic relations from 1 January 1979. The US recognised the PRC government as the sole legal government of China, broke relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan, terminated the Mutual Defense Treaty and withdrew its forces, keeping only unofficial ties with Taiwan thereafter. The Chinese text has the US "recognising" China's position that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it, while the English text uses "acknowledges" — a difference still read in different ways. On the day relations began, the NPC Standing Committee issued its Message to Compatriots in Taiwan; Deng Xiaoping visited the US in early 1979, and in April Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act. In Taiwan the event is called the severance of ROC–US relations, against which Chiang Ching-kuo lodged "the most serious protest".
diplomaticSino-Vietnamese War
On 17 February 1979, approximately 200,000 Chinese troops crossed into northern Vietnam along a broad front, opening a brief conflict that China described as a "punitive counter-attack in self-defence." The stated justifications were Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia — overthrowing China's ally the Khmer Rouge — and Vietnam's perceived alignment with the Soviet Union. After capturing several provincial capitals and suffering unexpectedly heavy casualties, Chinese forces withdrew on 16 March. The war exposed serious weaknesses in the People's Liberation Army and directly accelerated Deng Xiaoping's military modernisation programme.
militaryEstablishment of Special Economic Zones
On 26 August 1980, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed the Regulations on Special Economic Zones in Guangdong Province, establishing Special Economic Zones at Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou in Guangdong; in October the State Council approved a fourth zone at Xiamen in Fujian. The zones were granted market-oriented policies — including tax incentives, access to foreign capital, and autonomy over wages and prices — and served as controlled laboratories for economic reform within an unchanged political system. Shenzhen subsequently grew from a community of some 30,000 into a city of over ten million.
economicTrial of the Gang of Four and the Special Court
In September 1980 the NPC Standing Committee established a Special Court of the Supreme People's Court, which from 20 November 1980 to 25 January 1981 publicly tried ten principal members of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques. Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve (commuted to life in 1983), Wang Hongwen to life imprisonment, and the other seven to terms of sixteen to twenty years. The trial addressed criminal offences only; responsibility for the Cultural Revolution as a movement, including Mao Zedong's own, was not brought before the court.
politicalSixth Plenum of the 11th Central Committee and the 1981 Resolution on Party History
On 27 June 1981 the Sixth Plenum of the 11th CCP Central Committee unanimously adopted the "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China." Drafted over more than a year and discussed by some four thousand senior officials, it characterized the Cultural Revolution as a "domestic upheaval" initiated by a leader's error and exploited by counter-revolutionary cliques, while affirming that Mao Zedong's "merits are primary and his errors secondary" and upholding Mao Zedong Thought as the Party's guiding ideology. At the same plenum Hua Guofeng resigned as Party Chairman, Hu Yaobang was elected Chairman, and Deng Xiaoping became Chairman of the Central Military Commission.
politicalHousehold Responsibility System
Replacing collective farming, this system allowed farming households to lease land from the state and sell surplus produce on the open market, dramatically increasing agricultural productivity.
economicAugust 17th Communiqué
On 17 August 1982 the governments of the United States and the People's Republic of China released their third joint communiqué, addressing the question of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan left unresolved at normalization. The United States stated that it did not seek a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that such sales would not exceed the level of recent years in quality or quantity, and that it intended to reduce them gradually, leading over a period of time to a final resolution. In the same weeks, Washington conveyed to Taiwan statements later known as the "Six Assurances."
diplomaticAdoption of the 1982 Constitution
On 4 December 1982 the Fifth Session of the Fifth NPC adopted the current Constitution of the PRC by 3,037 votes to none, with 3 abstentions. Prepared by a revision committee set up in 1980 and based on the 1954 Constitution, the draft went through four months of nationwide discussion. It took the Four Cardinal Principles as its guiding ideology, placed citizens' rights before state organs, restored the State Presidency and limited top state leaders to two consecutive terms. It has since been amended several times, with the presidential term limit removed in 2018.
politicalThe 1983 "Strike Hard" Anti-Crime Campaign
In July 1983 Deng Xiaoping called for criminal offences to be met with "concentrated blows, heavy and swift, in accordance with the law." On 25 August the CCP Central Committee issued its decision on severely striking at criminal activities, and on 2 September the NPC Standing Committee permitted sentences above the statutory maximum, up to death, and cut the appeal period from ten days to three. Organized as "three battles over three years," the campaign's first battle alone saw 861,000 people sentenced, 24,000 of them to death, according to the official summary report. The broadly defined crime of "hooliganism" was applied extensively and was abolished in the 1997 revision of the Criminal Law.
politicalCampaign against Spiritual Pollution
On 12 October 1983, at the Second Plenum of the 12th Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping declared that "there must be no spiritual pollution on the ideological front," naming humanism and the theory of alienation. A campaign followed in theoretical, propaganda and literary circles: People's Daily director Hu Jiwei resigned, deputy editor-in-chief Wang Ruoshui was dismissed, and Zhou Yang was forced into a public self-criticism, while the campaign quickly spread to clothing, hairstyles and popular songs. On 14 December Hu Yaobang drew limits, insisting it not extend to people's ways of life and personal interests; the campaign then cooled and ended in early 1984.
politicalSino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong
Britain and China signed a treaty agreeing to transfer Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" framework under which Hong Kong's existing social and economic systems and way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years, with a high degree of autonomy.
diplomaticReduction of One Million Troops (1985–1987)
At an enlarged meeting of the Central Military Commission in Beijing from 23 May to 6 June 1985, CMC Chairman Deng Xiaoping announced on 4 June that the People’s Liberation Army would be cut by one million men, and the meeting shifted army building from war readiness to peacetime construction. The eleven military regions were merged into seven, headquarters organs were cut by nearly half and large numbers of officers were converted to civilian posts or demobilized. In April 1987 China announced the reduction basically complete, with strength down from 4.238 to 3.235 million; according to a 1995 white paper, 1.039 million had been cut by 1990. Beijing presents it as a strategic shift in army building and a contribution to world peace; a 1986 CIA assessment saw it also as a cost-cutting measure that met resistance and whose results may have been overstated; a US study notes that budget cuts pushed the military into business and corruption.
military1986–87 Student Protests and Hu Yaobang's Resignation
Student demonstrations for democracy and greater press freedom spread across dozens of cities; conservative Party elders blamed General Secretary Hu Yaobang for tolerating the unrest, forcing his resignation—an event that would trigger the 1989 Tiananmen protests upon his death.
politicalThe 13th CCP Congress and the Theory of the Primary Stage of Socialism
The 13th CCP Congress met in Beijing from 25 October to 1 November 1987. Zhao Ziyang's report set out the theory of the primary stage of socialism, a basic line of "taking economic construction as the central task, adhering to the Four Cardinal Principles and persisting in reform and opening," a "three-step" development strategy, and a political reform agenda led by the separation of Party and government. The Central Committee was elected competitively for the first time, and Deng Liqun failed to win a seat; the First Plenum elected Zhao General Secretary, while Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and other veterans left the Politburo Standing Committee.
political1989 Tiananmen Square Events
Large-scale protests centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square were suppressed by the military on 4 June 1989; the death toll remains unknown. The events remain heavily censored in mainland China.
politicalDevelopment and Opening of Pudong
On 18 April 1990 Premier Li Peng announced in Shanghai, on behalf of the CPC Central Committee and State Council, approval to accelerate the development of Pudong. Deng Xiaoping had called Shanghai "our trump card". The 14th Party Congress in 1992 made Pudong the "dragon head" of opening along the Yangtze; the State Council approved the Pudong New Area that year and its administration was set up in 1993. Pudong financed infrastructure partly by selling stakes in bridges and tunnels, and Lujiazui grew into a finance and trade zone.
economicFounding of the Shanghai Stock Exchange
Authorised by the State Council and approved by the People's Bank of China, the Shanghai Stock Exchange was established on 26 November 1990 and opened for trading on 19 December in the Peacock Hall of the Pujiang Hotel north of the Bund, with 8 listed companies — the first stock exchange in mainland China after 1949. Approved by Shanghai Party secretary and mayor Zhu Rongji and organised by Wei Wenyuan, it built a computerised matching system in under six months. In 1992 Deng Xiaoping said stock markets should be "tried out firmly"; after prices were freed that May the index swung wildly.
economicDeng Xiaoping's Southern Tour
Deng Xiaoping's tour of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and other southern cities ended the post-Tiananmen retrenchment in reform by asserting that planning and the market are economic instruments rather than markers distinguishing socialism from capitalism, paving the way for the 14th Party Congress to formally establish the socialist market economy as China's reform objective.
politicalDecision to Build a Socialist Market Economy
The 14th Party Congress formally established the goal of building a 'socialist market economy,' replacing the 'planned commodity economy' formulation of the 1980s and providing an ideological framework for the development of the non-state sector and foreign investment.
economicDeath of Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping died in Beijing on 19 February 1997 of late-stage Parkinson's disease complicated by a lung infection. The official obituary gave his age as 93 (by traditional reckoning) and called him the "chief architect" of reform and opening. The funeral committee invited no foreign delegations and held no viewing of the body; a 10,000-person memorial meeting took place in the Great Hall of the People on 25 February, with Jiang Zemin delivering the eulogy. On 2 March his ashes were scattered at sea, as he had asked. President Clinton issued a statement of condolence; Western assessments of his legacy divide over 1989.
politicalHong Kong Handover
The United Kingdom transferred sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC, establishing the "one country, two systems" framework that guaranteed Hong Kong's existing legal and economic systems for 50 years.
diplomaticChinese Communist Party Centenary
The CPC held a mass ceremony in Tiananmen Square marking its centenary; Xi Jinping declared that China had realised its first centenary goal, including the elimination of absolute poverty, and warned that foreign forces who dared challenge China would "have their heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel." In November, the Party adopted its third historical resolution in 100 years, elevating Xi's historical status to that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
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Chronicles of Modern China. (2026, July 21). Deng Xiaoping. Retrieved July 21, 2026, from https://www.cmcarchive.org/figures/deng-xiaoping
“Deng Xiaoping.” Chronicles of Modern China. Last modified July 21, 2026. Accessed July 21, 2026. https://www.cmcarchive.org/figures/deng-xiaoping.
Chronicles of Modern China. Deng Xiaoping[EB/OL]. (2026-07-21)[2026-07-21]. https://www.cmcarchive.org/figures/deng-xiaoping.