FORUM Deng Xiaoping, China, and the World ✣ Commentaries by Joseph Fewsmith, Frederick C. Teiwes, and Sergey Radchenko Reply by Alexander V. Pantsov Alexander V. Pantsov, with Steven I. Levine, Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 610 pp. $27.50. Editor’s Note: Deng Xiaoping had a crucial impact on China’s role in the world in the latter half of the twentieth century. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai oversaw Chinese foreign policy during the country’s first quarter century of Communist rule—initially establishing a close alliance with the Soviet Union, then turning bitterly against the USSR at the end of the 1950s, and finally pursuing a rapprochement with the United States in the early 1970s—but it was Deng who made the momentous decision in the late 1970s to integrate China into the global economic order that had been largely shaped by the United States from the mid-1940s on. When Mao and Zhou died in 1976, China was still one of the poorest countries in the world. Deng’s bid to link China with the international capitalist system spawned a prolonged period of rapid economic growth that nowadays has made the Chinese economy the second largest in the world. In political terms, however, Deng never made a full break with Maoism. Deng’s willingness to use brutal violence against unarmed demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989—killing many hundreds of people—kept China from modernizing its political system in a way compatible with the dynamism of its rapidly growing economy. Deng’s legacy in China is thus mixed, having turned his country into an economic powerhouse but having left it under a repressive authoritarian system. Over the past several years, two important biographies of Deng have ap- peared in English, one put out in 2011 by a colleague of mine at Harvard, Ezra Vogel, and the other produced by Alexander V. Pantsov, assisted by Steven I. Levine. Pantsov, who spent the first part of his career in Moscow before mov- ing to the United States in the early 1990s and becoming a professor of history (currently at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio), originally published the book in Russian in 2013. Soon thereafter he teamed up with Levine to put Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 19, No. 4, Fall 2017, pp. 211–225, doi:10.1162/JCWS_c_00771 © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 211 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_c_00771 by guest on 27 September 2021 Forum out a slightly revised English version, the same approach the two of them had earlier undertaken with a huge biography of Mao published by Pantsov in Russian in 2007 and in English in 2012. We asked three leading experts on Chinese politics and Chinese foreign policy under Mao and Deng—Joseph Fewsmith, Frederick C. Teiwes, and Sergey Radchenko—to offer their assess- ments of the Pantsov-Levine biography of Deng. We present their commen- taries here along with a reply by Pantsov to numerous points of criticism. Commentary by Joseph Fewsmith In March 1931, Deng Xiaoping, who had been commanding troops in the ill- fated Bose Uprising in Guangxi Province, led the remnants of his 7th Corps to Jiangxi to link up with Mao Zedong in Jiangxi. As they got to southern Jiangxi, Deng left for Shanghai to report to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) center. On the day he left, his co-commander, Li Mingrui, came under attack and had to retreat. The circumstances of Deng leaving were murky, raising the possibility he had abandoned his troops (p. 80). The incident was significant not only because it forms a part of a chapter on the Bose Uprising, which is not well known, but also because Mao in April 1967, after Deng had been enduring months of harsh criticism in the Cultural Revolution, suddenly had Deng woken up in the middle of the night to berate him for sending work teams into the schools. He then asked Deng whether he had abandoned the 7th Corps 36 years earlier (p. 256). This incident perhaps sheds less light on Deng than on Mao, who seems to have spent much time in his later years ruminating about the past actions of his comrades. Had Mao’s memories been stirred by Red Guard charges that Deng had indeed abandoned his troops? Did Mao just want to see how Deng would respond to the question in the early hours of the morning? Certainly Mao must have accepted Deng’s explanation when he joined the Central Soviet and must have seen Deng as a loyal comrade when Deng was purged as part of Mao’s ouster from the top leadership in 1933. As far as we know, Mao did not raise the question in all the years Deng served as political commissar in the Second Field Army or as General Secretary of the CCP. The murkiness of Deng’s actions in Guangxi, the complex relationship he had with Mao, and many other details of Deng’s pre-reform life are difficult to ferret out. With Mao, we have much more to go on, but even with him it is difficult to form a picture of the man (though Alexander Pantsov and Steven I. Levine do an admirable job in their biography of Mao). The trouble is that writing a biography of even (especially) such a prominent figure as Deng is 212 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_c_00771 by guest on 27 September 2021 Forum very hard. We simply do not have the personal papers, correspondence, and detailed memories of close associates that we have with other major historical personages. It will be a long time before a biography of Deng comparable to Stephen Kotkin’s recent volumes on Iosif Stalin or Robert Caro’s multivolume study of Lyndon Johnson is feasible. If we cannot have the level of detail and the feel for personality, motives, and personal relations that we would like to have, what can we reasonably expect? In the case of Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life, what we get is an extensive telling of the Communist revolution with attention to what Deng was doing at particular points in time. But what Deng thought about the steps he was taking is hard to say. Consider the Jiangxi period, for example. Deng was close to Zhou Enlai, whom he had gotten to know and work with in France, but we hear nothing about what Deng felt when Zhou repeatedly disagreed with Mao on strategy and when Zhou stood by as Mao (and Deng) were sidelined. Similarly, Deng had studied in the Soviet Union, albeit only for a year, but we hear nothing of his relations with the so-called returned student faction. Perhaps this is simply because Deng was so low in the political hierarchy at the time that he was not even aware of tensions at a higher level, much less in a position to enter the political fray. Given how difficult it is to know much about how Deng felt or how he interacted with the other major political figures of the time, it is curious that Pantsov and Levine choose to spend roughly two-thirds of their biography on Deng’s revolutionary history rather than his better-known period as the leader of China’s reforms. Presumably this is because Pantsov and Levine want to emphasize that Deng’s consciousness, commitment to Marxism-Leninism, and loyalty to the CCP emerged from his life of activity in the party. Deng’s loyalty is repeatedly emphasized, but this only raises the question of where and when Deng rethought his commitments. Deng was notorious for his leadership of the anti-rightist movement in 1957, but he is also well known for his support of intellectuals when he returned to power in 1977. Before the CCP’s watershed Third Plenum in December 1978, Deng, still under Hua Guofeng’s leadership, turned his port- folio of science and education into a power position. He proceeded with the opening of universities and the restoration of the examination system in the fall of 1977 and humbly told the Fourth Congress of Scientists that he would serve as their “logistics officer.” This was a major change of attitude. Perhaps Deng started to understand the damage he helped bring about as the anti- rightest movement descended into the Cultural Revolution, and his hatred of the Cultural Revolution no doubt stemmed not only from his own political demise but also from the crippling of his son, Deng Pufang. Deng may have 213 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws_c_00771 by guest on 27 September 2021 Forum been a revolutionary, but he was also a family man, joining his family for din- ner every Sunday when he could. It is hard to imagine Mao doing the same. No doubt Deng’s years in exile in Jiangxi provided the time to think through a different way of doing things. The Pantsov-Levine study is difficult to compare with Ezra Vogel’s 2011 biography of Deng, but Pantsov and Levine invite such comparison.1 They criticize Vogel for spending just 32 pages on Deng’s life prior to Mao’s death. Deng’s six decades as a revolutionary must have taught him a great deal, but what exactly is that legacy? Deng was a disciplined cadre who carried out a violent revolution, but he was hardly unique in this regard. The Chinese Communist revolution was an extremely violent affair, and our understand- ing of the depth and breadth of that violence is only increasing as new studies, including the Pantsov-Levine book, explore new sources.