£Childhood£
At the turn of the century the Chinese nation was groaning
in misery. Under the leadership of Dr. Sun yat-sen a
resolution was brewing, and the country was on the eve
of radical changes. It was in this turbulent time that
Deng Xiaoping was born.
Deng's birthplace was Paifang Village in Xiexing
township, Guang'an County, in the province of Sichuan.
His childhood home was a traditional compound with
one-storied housed surrounding a courtyard on three
sides. It was in these tree-shaded, tile-roofed
buildings that his forefathers had lived for three
generations and that Deng Xixian - the future Deng
Xiaoping - was born on August 22,1904.
His
father, Deng Wenming, had studied at the Chengdu School
of Law and Political Science. Xiaoping's
mother, Dan by her family name, died early, leaving
behind the eldest son Deng Xiaoping, his three younger
brothers, an elder sister and two younger sisters.
At
five the boy entered and old-fashioned private
pre-school, at seven a modern primary school and in due
course a middle school in his native county. It happened
that in 1919, Wu Yezhang, a Chongqing native,
launched
a work-study programa for young people to go to France.
On the proposal of Wu Yezhang, after passing the entrance
examinations, the boy was enrolled in the school.
In
his teens Deng Xiaoping already had some simple
patriotic ideas. After the May 4th Movement of 1919, he
joined his schoolmates in a boycott of Japanese goods.
But his understanding did not go beyond the
slogan "save the country by industrialization",
an idea popular among students at the time. His ardent
hope was to go to France to learn industrial skills
through work and study for the benefit of the country.
£Study
abroad£
In
the summer of 1920, Deng Xiaoping graduated from the
Chongqing Preparatory School, filled with fervent hopes,
he and 80 schoolmates boarded a ship for France
(traveling steerage) and in October arrived in
Marseilles. Deng, the youngest of all the Chinese
students, had just turned 16.
Things did not
turn out as he had hoped. He found that he had to spend
most of his time working, and at the most unskilled
jobs. Two months after his arrival he began to do odd
jobs at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in central
France. Later he worked as a fitter in the Renault
factory in the Paris suburb of Billancourt, as a fireman
on locomotive and as a kitchen helper in restaurants. He
barely earned enough to survive. He attended middle
schools briefly in Bayeux and Chatillon.
It was
shortly after the end of World War I, and the European
countries had not yet recovered from the devastation. In
France job-hunting was especially difficult because of
the depressed economy. Even those Chinese students who
were fortunate enough to find jobs in big factories were
paid only half the wages of the ordinary French workers.
Worse still, at this time Deng Xiaoping's family could
no longer afford to send him money, so he had to scrape
along on his own. His high hopes of studying abroad were
crushed by the grim reality.
But
new ideas were taking strong hold of the young man.
Thanks to the October Revolution in Russia, the workers'
movement in France was gaining momentum, and Marxism and
other schools of socialist thought were winning more and
more adherents. A number of ideologically advanced
Chinese students were starting to accept Marxism and
take the revolutionary road. Under the influence of his
seniors, Zhao Shiyan, Zhou Enlai and others, Deng began
to study Marxism and do political propaganda work. In
1922 he joined the Communist Party of Chinese Youth in
Europe (later the name was changed to the Chinese
Socialist Youth League in Europe). In the second half of
1924, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and became
one of the leading members of the General Branch of the
Youth League in Europe. When he worked in Lyons the
following year, the Party organization appointed him
special representative to the Lyons Area Party Branch,
where he directed the Party and League work as well as
the Chinese workers' movement.
During
the five years he spent in France, from age 16 to 21,
Deng Xiaoping was transformed from a patriotic youth
into a Marxist. It was the beginning of his
revolutionary career. The Chinese Socialist Youth League
in Europe published a mimeographed magazine, the Red
Light, designed to help the Chinese comrades in France,
Belgium and Germany to study theory. Deng not only
co-edited and wrote articles for the journal but also
cut stencils and did the mimeographing.
At
about this time groups of Chinese Communist Party and
Youth League members in Europe were going to the Soviet
Union to study. In early 1926 Deng Xiaoping left France
for Moscow. At first he entered the Communist University
of the Toilers of the East, but shortly afterwards he
transferred to the Sun yat-sen University. Named after
the pioneer of the Chinese revolution, this university
was intended to train personnel for the revolution. In
China, meanwhile, a united front had been formed between
the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Inspired by Dr.
Sun's policy of alliance with Russia, co-operation with
the Communist Party and assistance to peasants and
workers, large numbers of Chinese young people with
lofty ideals were arriving at the university to study.
The two youngest
students in Deng Xiaoping's class were Feng Funeng, the eldest daughter
of Feng Yuxiang, and Jiang Jingguo (Chiang Chingkuo),
the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek.
Deng
spent a year at the Sun Yat-sen University, reading
books and studying the basic theories of
Marxism-Leninism. At this time Feng Yuxiang, commander
of the National Army in northwest China, arrived in the
Soviet Union. He was preparing to join in the national
revolution in China, so he asked the Communist
International to send a number of its Chinese comrades
to work in his army. Deng was one of the score of people
selected. Traversing the deserts of Mongolia, he arrived
in his homeland in the spring of 1927.
After
six ears abroad, Deng Xiaoping was no longer the naive
young man he had been before he left China. He was now a
staunch revolutionary with a basic understanding of
Marxism-Leninism and some experience of practical
struggle.
£The
early years after the return£
Deng
returned on the eve of the breakdown of co-operation
between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and the
political situation was unstable. It was under these
circumstances that in March 1927 he accepted the Party's
assignment to go to Xi'an and work at the Sun Yat-sen
Military and Political Academy. This was the first place
where he carried out revolutionary activities in China.
The Academy was officially under the general
headquarters of Feng Yuxiang's National United Army;
actually, however, it had been established by Liu Bojian
and several other Communists. Deng Xiaoping served as
Chief of the Political Section, political instructor and
Secretary of the Communist Party organization in the
Academy. The Academy trained a number of political aware
junior officers as well as Party and political cadres. It sent some of its
graduates to the Political Security
Corps of the Shaanxi Command of the National United
Army, thus gradually building a Communist-led corps of
revolutionaries within the army and laying the
foundation for the communist-led uprising that took
place in Weinan and Huaxian in Shaanxi in April and May
1928. Some future generals of the Northern Shaanxi Red
Army were also graduated from the Academy.
In
April 1927 an abrupt change occurred in China's
political situation. In June Feng Yuxiang ordered all
the Communists in his army to assemble in Kaifeng in
neighboring Henan Province to receive
"training". Actually, this was only a pretext
to get rid of them. Acting on Party instructions, Deng
Xiaoping left Xi'an for Hankou in Hubei Province, where
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party was
located.
In
Hankou he worked as a secretary for the central
Committee. In the meantime, the political situation
continued to deteriorate. Before long the Kuomintang
government in Wuhan was openly attacking the Communist
party. A grim reign of White terror descended on the
country, forcing the Communist Party underground. It was
at this time that Deng Xixian changed his name to Deng
Xiaoping. On August 7 the Central Committee held an
emergency meeting which Deng attended as a non-voting delegate. After the
Central Committee secretly moved to Shanghai, the
23-year-old Deng was appointed chief secretary of the
Central Committee, in charge of the general
headquarters' documents, confidential work,
communications and financial affairs. In June 1928, when
the Party held its Sixth Congress in Moscow, he stayed
behind to help Li Weihan and Ren Bishi, who had been
left in charge of day-to-day affairs at headquarters.
£Building
the Seventh and Eighth Armies of the Red Army£
After Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei staged successive
counter-revolutionary soups, the once-dynamic Great
Revolution ended in failure. To save the revolution, the
Communist Party launched a series of armed uprisings
against the reactionary Kuomintang regime. In the summer
of 1929 Li Mingrui and Yu Zuobo, who had just taken
control of military and political power in Guangxi to
direct the work of the local Party organizations and
prepare for an armed uprising. This was the first time
that Deng was independently undertaking the important
responsibility of leading a region.
In
Nanning Deng Xiaoping made contact with Yu Zuobo and Li
Minrui under the alias of Deng Bin and began building
revolutionary forces. In October Yu and Li's campaign
against Chiang was defeated. Deng and Zhang Yunyi pulled
the three Communist-controlled detachments out Nanning
and led them to the Zuojiang and Youjiang areas. By the
end of the month Deng was appointed Secretary of the
Guangxi Front-line Committee of the Chinese Community
Party. In December, together with Zhang Yunyi and Wei
Baqun, he launched the Bose Uprising, founding the
Youjiang Soviet Government and the Seventh Army of the
Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and Secretary of
its Front-line Committee. In February of the following
year, along with Li Mingrui and Yu Zuoyu, he launched
the Longzhou Uprising , creating the Zuojiang Soviet
Government and the Eighth Army and serving as its
Political Commissar.
In the
same month Deng returned secretly to Shanghai to report
to the Central Committee. The Committee officially
appointed Li Mingrui General Commander of both the
Seventh and Eighth Armies and Deng Xiaoping their
Political Commissar. In the Youjiang area they mobilized
the masses to expropriate local tyrants, distribute
land, carry out agrarian revolution and establish
revolutionary governments at various levels. As a
result, the local Red Army forces were expended to cover
some 29 counties with a population totaling more than
one million. Thus the Youjiang area became one of the
largest revolutionary bases.
At
this time, however, the leaders of the Central Committee
made some "Left" errors. In October 1930 a
representative of the Committee came to Guangxi to push
the Li Lisan line, asserting that a nationwide
revolutionary high tide had set in. He accordingly
ordered the Seventh Army (with which the Eighth Army had
already been merged, after suffering military setbacks)
to leave the base area immediately and to fight its way
to Liuzhou, Guiling and Guangzhou. Deng Xiaoping doubted
the possibility of taking these cities and expressed his
disagreement. Nevertheless, most of his comrades
maintained that they should obey the representative's
instructions, and Deng was therefore obliged to act
accordingly. Eventually, owing to repeated defeats and
heavy losses, the Army had to give up the plan of
attacking the big cities.
After
the representative of the Central Committee left, the
Army was
reorganized. The Front-line Committee decided to move
the troops to Jiangxi Province to join the Red Army
forces in the Central Revolutionary Base Area there.
After the Seventh Army took the seat of Chongyi County
in Jiangxi in February 1931, the Front-line Committee
sent Deng to Shanghai to report to the Central
Committee. In Shanghai he wrote a report in which he
described in detail how things stood in the Seventh Army
and analyzed the lessons they had learned from their
uprisings.
£Before
and after the Long March£
In
the summer of 1931, with the approval of the Central
Committee, Deng Xiaoping went to the Central
Revolutionary Base Area in southern Jiangxi and western
Fujian. Fierce fighting was still going on there, as the
Red Army was trying to smash Chiang Kai-shek's third
"encirclement and suppression" campaign.
Before
long Deng assumed the post of Party Committee Secretary
of Ruijin County, which was adjacent to the Central
Revolutionary Base Area. The first thing he did was to
rehabilitate the cadres and ordinary people who had
previously been wronged and called a Soviet congress to
discuss the work of the county, thus arousing the
people's enthusiasm and vastly improving the situation.
In the winter of 1932 he was appointed Secretary of the
Party Committee of Huichang, a key county, and began
directing the work in the three countries of Huichang,
Xunwu and Anyuan. Six months later he was transferred to
the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee as Director of
its Propaganda Department.
Just
at this point, the provisional central leadership, which
had been following the line of "Left"
adventuresome, moved its headquarters from Shanghai to
the Central Revolutionary Base Area. Deng Xiaoping, Mao
Zetan, Xie Weijun and Gu Bo, following the correct line
represented by Mao Zedong, had all along been acting in
accordance with the actual circumstances. They opposed
the theory of "making cities the center of the
Chinese revolution" and advocated building strength
in the vast rural areas, where the enemy's forces were
relatively weak. They rejected military adventuresome in
favor of luring the enemy in deep. They were against
expanding the Red Army's main forces at the expense of
local armed forces and urged that both be expanded
simultaneously. They opposed the "Left"
land-distribution policy which would have left former
middle and rich peasants destitute. In view of these
disagreements, the provisional central leadership waged
a struggle against them. Deng was removed from the post
of Director of the Propaganda Department of the Jiangxi
Provincial Party Committee and given the most serious
warning. Soon he was sent to the Nancun District Party
Committee in outlying Le'an County to work as an
ordinary inspector.
However, Wang Jiaxiang, Director of the General
Political Department of the Red Army, and Luo Ronghuan,
Director of the Organization Division, knew Deng
Xiaoping well. They sent him to the General Political
Department to serve as its secretary-general. Soon
afterwards he was assigned to work in the Propaganda
Division of the Department, where he was made
editor-in-chief of the official organ Red Star. This
journal, which offered both news and articles on a
variety of subjects, never ceased publication throughout
the war years. It was hailed as the "Red Army's
instructor on Party work".
In
October 1934, because of the failure of the fifth
campaign against "encirclement and
suppression", the Central Red Army was forced to
begin the Long March. Deng Xiaoping took the post of
chief secretary of the Central Committee for the second
time and attended the Zunyi Meeting, the event that
marked a turning point in the history of the Party.
After the First and the Fourth Front Armies of the Red
Army joined forces, he became Chief of the Propaganda
Division of the First Army Group's Political department.
After arriving in northern Shaanxi, he took part in the
Red Army's Eastern Expedition to neighbouring Shanxi
Province. After the conclusion of the expedition he
became Deputy and then Director of the War of Resistance
Against Japanese Aggression.
£On
the battlefield during the War of Resistance against
Japanese Aggression£
In
1937 the Japanese imperialists launched a full-scale war
of aggression against China. In the interest of the
whole nation, the Chinese Communist Party worked hard to
bring about a second period of co-operation with the
Kuomingtang, thus achieving nationwide unity in
resistance. In accordance with the agreement between the
two sides, the Chinese Workers' and Peasant' Red Army
was reorganized as the Eighth Route Army of the national
Revolutionary Army and marched to the front. Deng
Xiaoping was appointed Deputy Director of the Political
Department of the eighth Route Army and, shortly
afterwards, Political Commissar of its 129th Division,
of which Liu Bocheng was commander.
The 129th
Division drove deep into the rear of the
Japanese-occupied areas, established itself in the
Taihang Mountains and spread out towards the plains.
Bordering on the three provinces of Shanxi, Hebei and
Henan, this mountain range, known in ancient times as
" the ridge of the earth", had long been a
strategic region contested by rival armies in north
China. High and perilous, it was easy to defend but
difficult to attack. After consolidating their positions
in the Tailing Mountains, Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng
divided their troops into small detachments to mobilize
the masses, organize anti-Japanese armed forces and set
up local democratic governments. Having established an
anti-Japanese base in the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan border
area, they led their troops east across the
Beiping-Hankou Railway into the southern Hebei plains,
where they established the Southern Hebei Anti-Japanese
Base Area. At the same time they set up the Taiyue and
Hebei-Shangdong-Henan base areas.
When
the war entered a stalemate, changes took place within
the anti-Japanese camp. Some diehard reactionaries in
the Kuomintang began to create friction behind enemy
lines, attacking Eighth Route Army encampments and
killing officers and soldiers. The Eighth Route Army was
thus
placed in the dangerous position of being caught between
two fires. In December 1939 the Kuomintang diehards
launched the first anti-Communist onslaught: the troops
under Zhu Huaibing, commander of the Kuomintang's 97th
Army, mounted large-scale offensive against the Taihang
Mountain region where the General headquarters of the
Eighth Route Army and the 129th division were located.
In March 1940, driven beyond the limits of forbearance,
Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping ordered their troops to
rise in counter-attack, and in four days of fighting and
with coordinated efforts of the troops from the
Shanxi-Qahar-Hebei Military Command, they wiped out Zhu
huaibing's whole army and a number of miscellaneous
troops, or a total of 10,000 men. The defeat of this
Kuomintang onslaught enabled the Eighth Route Army to
concentrate on fighting the Japanese aggressors and
building up its base areas in the enemy's rear.
Beginning in August 1940, Liu and Deng, with 38
regiments under their command ( not including local
forces), participated in the" Hundred- Regiment
Campaign", fighting 529 operations, big and small,
they dealt heavy blows to the Japanese and puppet troops
and greatly strengthened the whole nation's confidence
in victory.
In
1941 the war of resistance behind enemy lines in north
China entered the most difficult stage, when the
Japanese troops concentrated their attacks on the rear.
They launched a campaign to "tighten public
security" there, adopted a "burn all, kill
all, loot all" policy and built a network of
blockhouses to encircle the army and people of the base
areas. For several years on end the enemy's incessant
"mopping-up" operations, together with natural
calamities, placed the base areas in an extremely
difficult position. In September 1942, in addition to
his post of Political Commissar of the 129th Division,
Deng was appointed Secretary of the Taihang sub-Bureau
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In
October 1943, when Peng Dehuai, Acting Secretary of the
Northern Bureau of the Central Committee, and Liu
Bocheng returned to Yan'an to take part in the Party's
rectification movements, Deng replaced Peng as Acting
Secretary. In that capacity he was in charge of the work
of the General Headquarters of the Eighth Route Army and
bore responsibility for leading the struggle of the army
and people in the base areas behind enemy lines.
Employing the tactic of advancing when the enemy
advanced, he launched guerrilla operations against the
enemy-occupied areas and especially against
communication lines. Under his command the army smashed
a series of ruthless "mopping-up" operations
by the Japanese and puppet troops. He led the army and
the people of the whole region in successful efforts to
build up Party organizations, armed units and local
governments, to conduct a Party rectification movement,
to secure fewer and better troops and simpler
administration, to reduce rents and interest rates and
to launch a large-scale production campaign.
With
intimate knowledge of the actual conditions, Deng
Xiaoping wrote many articles and speeches full of
original ideas, demonstrating his ability as a
strategist to grasp the overall situation and tackle
complex problems. He put forward a series of specific
policies and tactics for struggle against the enemy and
enunciated the far-sighted principle of accumulating
strength by all possible means to prepare for a
strategic counter-offensive and for reconstruction after
the war. At a meeting held by the Party School of the
Northern Bureau of the Central Committee to mobilize
party members for the rectification movement, he
delivered a speech in which he gave a high evaluation to
the Party's leader Mao Zedong, systematically explained
Mao Zedong Thought - Marxism-Leninism as applied to
conditions in China-and declared that the Party should
take it as a guide.
During
the anti-Japanese war Deng returned to Yan'an briefly on
three occasions: in September 1938 to attend the
Enlarged Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central
Committee; in July 1939 to attend the Enlarged Meeting
of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and to
marry Zhuo Lin (a revolutionary comrade working there)
in August; and in June 1945 to attend the First Plenary
Session of the Seventh Central Committee, to which he
had just been elected.
For 13
long years of war Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng worked
in close cooperation, and the two became fast friends.
Later, Deng Xiaoping said: "People used to say that
Liu and Deng were inseparable, and we did feel
inseparable in our hearts. It was always a great
pleasure for me to work and fight alongside Bocheng."
£The
decisive years£
After
the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the Kuomintang
reactionaries, in defiance of the strong desire of the
entire nation for peace and reconstruction, launched a
large-scale civil war with the intention of eliminating
the Communist Party and the revolutionary forces under
its leadership. Under the command of Mao Zedong, the
army and the people in the liberated areas rose in
resistance. This was the War of Liberation, a war of
decisive importance in the history of China's democratic
revolution.
Before
launching all-out civil war, Chiang Kai-shek engaged in
peace negotiations with the Communist Party, while at
the same time stepping up war preparations and provoking
incessant local fighting. At that time Deng Xiaoping was
Secretary of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Bureau of
the Central Committee and concurrently Political
Commissar of the Shanxi-Hebei-shandong-Henan Military
Command, of which Liu Bocheng was commander. Located in
the central plains and crossed by the Beiping-Hankou,
Tianjin-Pukou and Datong-Puzhou railways, the
Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area was of great
strategic importance, as it blocked the Kuomintang
troops' advance towards the liberated areas of north and
northeast China. Accordingly, this area became the
Kuomintang's first target.
In
September 1945 Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping directed
the famous Battle of Shangdang, in the Changzhi area in
southeastern Shanxi. In this battle their troops
defeated all the 13 divisions of Yan Xishan's army,
numbering more than 35,000, which had intruded into the
Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Liberated Area. Having thus
consolidated their rear, they immediately marched east
to intercept the Kuomintang troops that were advancing
north along the Beiping-Hankou railway. At the Battle of
Handan they routed two enemy armies and won over
another, putting out of action a total of more than
40,000 Kuomintang army's attack on the liberated areas,
greatly strengthened the position of the Communist Party
in the negotiations in Chongqing and played an important
part in hastening a cease-fire agreement.
In
June 1946 the Kuomintang tore up the cease-fire
agreement and launched all-out civil war. The main force
of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army commanded
by Liu and Deng engaged in mobile warfare on both sides
of the Longhai Railway. Advancing and withdrawing over
great distances, they fought nine big engagements in
quick succession, at Longhai, Dingtao, Juye and other
places, annihilating large numbers of Kuomintang
effective.
The
situation was still grave when the War of Liberation
entered its second year. The Kuomintang army, though
greatly weakened, was still nearly twice as large as the
People's Liberation Army and vastly superior in arms and
equipment. In an attempt to take the war deep into the
liberated areas, it was making heavy attacks on key
points in Shandong and northern Shaanxi. In light of the
new overall situation, the Communist Party led by Mao
Zedong decided to pass immediately from strategic
defense to strategic offense, without waiting to have
smashed the enemy attack and gained superiority over the
Kuomintang. Focusing its attack on the Central Plains,
where the enemy was weak, and shifting to exterior-line
operations, the PAL would thrust directly to the enemy's
rear, hoping to bring about a strategic change in the
war situation.
According to the Central Committee's plan, it was the
main force of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army
under the command of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping that
was to carry out this crucial mission. At the end of
June 1947, in a surprise move, Liu and Deng, with an
army of 120,000, crossed the dangerous Huanghe (Yellow
River) and entered southwestern Shandong. In 28 days of
continuous fighting they routed 56,000 enemy troops,
thus clearing the way for their march south. They
decided that instead of leaving contingents behind to
secure each city they took, they would press forward by
forced marches. In 20-odd days, despite blocking and
pursuit by hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, they
crossed the Longhai railway and covered a distance of
500 kilometers, traversing the marshy 15-kilometer
floodplain of the Huanghe, wading the Shahe, Ruhe and
Huaihe rivers and finally reaching the Dabie Mountains
on the borders of Hubei, Henan and Anhui provinces.
From
their position in the Dabie Mountains north of the
Changjiang (Yangtze River), the enemy under Liu and Deng
posed a direct threat to the vast Kuomintang areas south
of the river, including Nanjing in the east and Wuhan in
the west. The Kuomintang was obliged to assemble its
main forces to defend the area and encircled the Dabie
Mountain region with 30 bridges numbering 200,000 men.
The troops under Liu and Deng were exhausted from
continuous marching and fighting and were unfamiliar
with the terrain. Furthermore, since they had only just
arrived in the new area, they had no time to set up
local governments and mobilize the people, so they were
short of food, clothing and ammunition. Liu Bocheng took
command of part of the force and broke through the
encirclement to build new base areas along the western
reaches of the Huaihe River, while Deng Xiaoping and Li
Xiannian, Deputy Commander of the Central Plains
Military Command, were left to command a crack force
whose task was to continue stubborn resistance in the
mountains.
Calling on the soldiers to be selfless, Deng said that
there were two loads to be carried, and one was heavier
than the other. If they in the Dabie Mountains carried
the heavier load, armies in other regions would be
able to destroy large numbers of enemy troops and carry
out intensive work among the masses, which would be
great to the general advantage. They should therefore
hold on firmly, no matter how weak they became and what
hardships they had to endure. Sharing the hardest
conditions with their men, Deng and Li maneuvered in the
mountain gullies day and night, often on empty stomachs.
They divided their forces into smaller units, some to
deal with the enemy's local "peace preservation
corps" and others to engage in grassroots political
work. If a large enemy force was approaching, they would
concentrate part of their troops to attack it. Meantime,
they mobilized the people to struggle against despotic
feudal landlords and organized local armed forces and
militia, thus establishing a solid base in the Dabie
Mountains.
In the
end, the repeated "suppression" operations
conducted by massive Kuomintang forces were defeated.
Deployed in a triangle in the middle of the Changjiang,
Huaihe, Huanghe and Hanshui rivers three armies-the one
led by Liu and Deng and two field armies newly arrived
in the south, one led by Chen Yi and Su Yu, the other by
Chen Geng and Xie Fuzhi-pinned down some 90 of the more
than 160 brigades of enemy troops stationed on the
southern front. They pushed the battle line south from
the Huanghe to the north bank of the Changjiang and made
the Central Plains, which had served as the rear of the
Kuomintang troops in their offensives on the liberated
areas, the base from which the PLA would advance to
nationwide victory. This was a success of great
strategic importance. In May 1984 the Central Committee
appointed Deng Xiaoping First Secretary of its Central
Plains Bureau and Political Commissar of the Central
Plains Military Command.
With
the launching of the successive Liaoxi-Shenyang,
Huai-Hai and Beiping-Tianjin campaigns, the War of
Liberation finally entered decisive stage.
In
November 1948 the Huai-Hai Campaigns began. It was to
last 65 days.
The
battlefield of the Huai-Hai Campaign, centered on Xuzhou,
covered a wide area, from the shores of the Yellow Sea
in the east to the borders of Henan and Anhui provinces
in the west, and from the areas along the Longhai
Railway in the north to the Huaihe River in the south.
For the Communist-led forces, this enemy-occupied area
constituted a barrier to the Changjiang and to Nanjing,
the capital of the Kuomintang government. After the fall
of Jinan, the Kuomintang government drew back its forces
and assembled in the Xuzhou area all the best troops on
the southern front that were operating under its direct
control-five armies and the troops from three
pacification zones, totaling 800,000 men.
On the
PLA side, seven columns of the Central Plains Field Army
(later named the Second Field Army), 16 columns of the
East China Field Army (later named the Third Field Army)
and some local armed forces, or a total of 600,000 men,
participated in this decisive campaign. They were
supported by 5.4 million volunteer laborers, who-using
carts, wheelbarrows, shoulder-poles, boats, and any
other means at hand -transported 200,000 tons of grain
and 7,000 tons of ammunition and other military
materiel. At this point, it was truly a people's war.
Deng Xiaoping was appointed Secretary of the General
Front-line Committee, which was to command both the
Central Plains Field Army and the East China Field Army
and to take charge of everything at the front. The other
members of the Committee were Liu Bocheng, Chen Yi, Su
Yu and Tan Zhenlin. Deng and his fellow commanders made
prudent dispositions in accordance with the strategy
outlined by the Central Committee and with the policy
decisions of Mao Zedong. Once operational plans were
decided upon, Deng was to help organize their execution
and to share command at the front.
In the
Huai-Hai Campaign the Kuomintang had more troops than
the PLA and enjoyed an even greater superiority in arms
and equipment. For this reason, the PLA adopted the
basic tactic of repeatedly isolating segments of the
enemy's main force and annihilating them one by one by
concentrating a superior force. At the outset of the
campaign the two armies led by He Jifeng and Zhang Kexia,
deputy commanders of the Third Pacification Zone of the
Kuomintang army, who were actually underground Communist
Party members, suddenly revolted on the battlefront. The
main force of the East China Field Army poured through
this opening in the enemy defenses to block the retreat
of the army commanded by Huang Botao, which was moving
towards Xuzhou from east of the Grand Canal, and tightly
encircle it in the Nianzhuang area.
After
this, the General Front-line Committee, again on its own
proposal with the approval of the Military Commission,
moved the Central Plains Field Army to the rear of the
enemy and took by surprise Suxian County along the
Tianjin-Pukou Railway, a place of strategic
significance. By so doing they severed communications
between Xuzhou and its rear, isolating the large number
of Kuomintang troops massed around the city and cutting
off their retreat. After wiping out Huang Botao's army,
the General Front-line Committee made another
suggestion: next they should eliminate Huang Wei's army
of reinforcements, which had come a long way from
southern Henan, was cut off from support and was
suffering from fatigue and shortage of food. The
Military Commission promptly agreed to this plan and
gave Liu, Chen and Deng authority of make decisions in
emergency situations without seeking approval from the
Commission. Accordingly, supported by a part of the East
China Field Army, the main force of the Central Plains
Field Army besieged Huang Wei's crack units in the
Shuangduiji area between the Huihe and Guohe rivers, and
in some 20 days of fierce fighting annihilated them.
Then the East China Field Army pressed on to defeat the
three armies led by Qiu Qingquan, Li Mi and Sun
Yuanliang, which had managed to break out of the siege
of Xuzhou and to flee west. Thus the Huai-Hai Campaign
ended in complete victory.
Through 65 days of fighting the PLA had finally
triumphed, wiping out 555,000 enemy troops. (Speaking
about the campaign later, Mao Zedong once said
facetiously to commanders of the campaign, "The
Huai-Hai Campaign was well fought-it was like a pot of
half-cooked rice, but bit by bit you managed to choke it
down.") By this time the Kuomintang's crack troops
on the southern front had been wiped out, the road to
Nanjing was open and the collapse of the reactionary
regime was imminent.
In April 1949 the General Front-line
Committee, still with Deng serving as its Secretary and
commanding the Second and Third Field Armies, directed
the crossing of the Changjiang. Breaking through the
line of defense painstakingly constructed by the
Kuomintang over 500 kilometres from Jiujiang (Jiangxi
Province) in the west to Jiangyin (Jiangsu Province) in
the east, the mighty force, one million strong, fought
its way across the Changjiang and went on to liberate
Nanjing and Shanghai and the vast areas of Jiangsu,
Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces. The liberation of
Nanjing signaled the collapse of the Kuomintang
government. On the eve of this vast operation, Deng
Xiaoping had received another appointment: he had been
made First Secretary of the East China Bureau and placed
in charge of taking over the east China region, the power
base of the Kuomintang.
When
the People's Republic of China was proclaimed on October
1, 1949, Deng attended the grand inauguration ceremony
in Beijing. Soon afterwards he joined his
comrades-in-arms and set out to liberate the Great
Southwest of China.
£Liberating
the great Southwest£
The
Great Southwest included Yunnan and Guizhou provinces
and present-day Sichuan and Tibet, with a total area of
2.3 million square kilometers. It was the last territory
held by the Kuomintang before they fled from the
mainland. To liberate the Southwest, the PLA adopted the
tactics of outflanking and encircling the enemy. The
Second Field Army, commanded by Liu Bocheng and Deng
Xiaoping, and a corps of the First Field Army, led by He
Long, advanced from the south and the north respectively
and swiftly liberated the entire Southwest except for
Tibet, ultimately driving the reactionary Kuomintang
forces from the mainland.
Vast
in area and poor in communications, the Southwest had a
long border line and a large population of many
nationalities, so that the liberating armies had to deal
with complicated relations among many different peoples.
There were hordes of stragglers and disbanded soldiers
in the area, because the Kuomintang had deployed over
900,000 troops there. Furthermore, the region swarmed
with local bandits and secret agents, and the feudal
forces were deep-rooted. The havoc wreaked by the
reactionary forces over the long years had resulted in a
dilapidated society, a ruined economy and a wretched
life for the people. Given the existing conditions, it
was a monumental task to build a new life on this vast,
complex, newly liberated land.
Deng
Xiaoping served as First Secretary of the Southwest
Bureau, Vice-Chairman of the Southwest Military and
Administrative Commission and Political Commissar of the
Southwest Military Command. While leading a campaign to
wipe out fleeing bandits and Kuomintang diehards, Deng,
along with Liu Bocheng, He Long and others, did
everything possible to unite with everyone who could be
united with and to win over everyone in the enemy camp
who could be won over. With great care and discretion,
they tried to break down traditional animosities among
different peoples and to bring about national unity.
Lastly, by mobilizing the masses, they accomplished
agrarian reform and other social reforms and built
democratic governments at different levels. Thus they
brought about stability in the Southwest.
Under
their leadership industrial and agricultural production
was quickly restored. One major project they decided to
undertake, despite the fact that there were many other
tasks clamoring for attention, was the building of the
Chengdu-Chongqing Railway. On July 1, 1952, when the
railway was officially opened, a dream cherished for
decades by the people of Sichuan came true at last.
At
this same time Deng Xiaoping and his comrades were also
working hard to prepare for the liberation of Tibet. In
1951, when Tibet was peacefully liberated, it was one of
their units that planted the five-star red flag on
"the roof of the world".
In
less than three years since Deng Xiaoping and the others
had come to work in the Southwest, fundamental changes
had taken place. The entire region had begun to thrive
as if spring had returned to the land.
£General
Secretary of the Party£
In
July 1952 the Central Committee of the Party transferred
Deng Xiaoping to the central organs. This transfer
marked the beginning of another important period in his
revolutionary career.
He
served first as both executive Vice-Premier of the
Government Administration Council (which was to become
the State Council in 1954) and Vice-Chairman of the
Financial and Economic Commission, and was soon
appointed Director of the Office of Communications and
Minister of Finance as well. In 1954, retaining only the
position of Vice-Premier, he became in addition
Secretary-General of the Party Central Committee,
Director of the Organization Department and
Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission. In
1955, at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventh
Central Committee, he was elected to the Committee's
Political Bureau. In 1956, at the Party's Eighth
National Congress, it was Deng who made the report on
the revision of the Party Constitution, and at the First
Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee he was
elected member of the Standing Committee of the
Political Bureau and General Secretary of the Central
Committee. Thus, at the age of 52 he became one of the
chief leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, together
with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen
Yun. For the next ten years Deng Xiaoping was General
Secretary, directing the routine work of the
Secretariat. Referring to this time, he said later,
"It was the busiest period in my life."
The
decade from September 1956 to May 1966 was a period in
which China began to build socialism in an all-round
way. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the
whole nation worked for socialist economic and cultural
development and scored great achievements. During this
time the Party accumulated important experience and also
made some serious mistakes. As General Secretary
assisting the Chairman and Vice-Chairmen of the Party in
managing the day-to-day work of the Central Committee,
Deng Xiaoping participated in the policy decisions of
the Party and the state. He put forward valuable
proposals on many subjects- strengthening Party
building, consolidating industrial enterprises,
improving their management, introducing the system of
workers' conferences and so on.
In his
report to the Party's Eighth National Congress in1956,
Deng offered a penetrating discussion on how to
strengthen the Party now that it was in power,
explaining that it was confronted by new tests and must
constantly guard against the danger of divorcing itself
from reality and from the mass line and practice
democratic centralism and that Party organizations at
all levels improve collective leadership, so as to
prevent individuals from acting arbitrarily and making
decisions on important issues alone.
In
1957, after the Party's Eighth Congress had called for
concentrated efforts to develop the productive forces,
gratifying results were achieved in economic work. From
this point of view, it was one of the best years since
the founding of the People's Republic. But in 1958,
during the Great Leap Forward and movement to establish
people's communes, "Left" errors began to spread.
There followed three years of great hardship. In order
to analyze experience and correct mistakes, Deng
Xiaoping and many other leading members of the Central
Committee went on inspection tours and formulated
regulations for different fields of work. Deng also
directed investigations in the rural areas and suggested
ways to rectify such mistakes as the institution of
compulsory communal canteens and the system under which
the commune was supposed to distribute necessities to
all. He emphasized that in correcting past mistakes it
was essential to abide by the principle of seeking truth
from facts. He pointed out in1962 that the relations of
production to be introduced should be of the type that
would be most readily accepted by the masses and most
conductive to the quick restitution and development of
production. He also presided over the drafting of two
important documents: the Draft Regulations on the
management of State Industrial Enterprises and the Draft
Provisional Regulations for Work in Institutions of
Higher Learning Directly Under the Ministry of
Education.
In
1962 the Central Committee convened a central working
conference attended by 7,000 persons, addressing this
conference, Deng Xiaoping, in light of the lessons
learned from the previous years, stressed the need to
adhere to democratic centralism and to carry on the
Party's fine traditions. He proposed that all the cases
of cadres who might have been wrongly treated in past
political movements should be re-examined and the cadres
rehabilitated as appropriate. On behalf of the
Secretariat of the Central Committee, Deng made an
earnest self-criticism in this connection at the
conference.
In his
tenure of office as the Party's General Secretary, Deng
Xiaoping had extensive contacts with leaders of other
Parties in the international communist movement. On
several occasions he headed delegations to Moscow to
have talks with N. Khtyshchov and other Soviet leaders
and always took a principled, independent stand.
£The
years of hardship and danger£
The
"cultural revolution", initiated and led by
Mao Zedong, took China down the wrong path. Taking
advantage of the situation, a group of careerists and
conspirators headed by Lin Biao and another by Jiang
Qing attempted to usurp the Party and state leadership,
bringing unprecedented disaster upon the Party and the
people. During the ten years of turmoil Deng Xiaoping
was twice discredited and removed from office and went
through the most painful ordeal in his revolutionary
career.
No sooner
had the "cultural revolution" been launched
than Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping became its chief
targets. In August 1966, at the Eleventh Plenary Session
of the Eighth Central Committee, when Mao Zedong issued
his famous call to "bombard the headquarters",
Liu and Deng were wrongly criticized and repudiated. Deng
was labeled the "No.2 Capitalist Roader in
China" and his family members were implicated. His
eldest son Deng Pufang, then a student of physics at
Beijing University, was persecuted with such violence
that he received permanent injuries which left him
confined to a wheelchair.
In
October 1969, when Lin Biao, in and attempt to seize
party and state leadership, issued his "No.1
order" to prepare against war, Deng Xiaoping was
sent under escort to Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province.
Having already been dismissed from all his posts, he was
taken to do manual labor at the county's tractor
repairing plant every morning. He worked as a fitter, as
he had learned to do in France in his youth, and found
himself as proficient at the job as before. Living with
him were his wife Zhuo Lin, who was often ill, and his
aged stepmother Xia Bogen, the three of them having only
one another to depend on. It was Deng Xiaoping who, at
the age of 65, took care of cleaning the room, chopping
the wood and breaking up the coal. When Deng Pufang
became paralyzed and needed help, after repeated
requests by his parents and grandmother he was sent to
live with them; then his father took on the additional
responsibility of nursing him. During this period Deng
Xiaoping made the best use of his spare time, often
reading late into the night. He read a great number of
Marxist-Leninist works and many other books both Chinese
and foreign, ancient and modern. The ordeal in Xinjian
lasted for three years.
In
September 1971 the collapse of Lin Biao's plot for a
counter-revolutionary coup and his death in an air crash
eventually led to the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping.
In 1972 Mao Zedong began to consider letting Deng resume
his work, and the following year, with the support of
Zhou Enlai, Deng was restored to his post as Vice-Premier
of the State Council. In 1974 he delivered a speech at
the Sixth Special Session of the United nations General
Assembly on behalf of the Chinese government, in which
he systematically set forth Mao Zedong's thesis of the
three worlds. In January 1975, when Premier Zhou Enlai
became seriously ill and was hospitalized, Deng Xiaoping
was reappointed Vice-Premier and appointed Vice-Chairman
of the Central Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Central
Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of
the PLA, thus replacing Zhou as the person in charge of
all the routine work of the Party and the state.
Jiang
Qing had tried to prevent Deng's reinstatement from the
outset, but it was in 1975 that the struggle between
Deng and the Gang of Four became acute. With all his
energy Deng set about restoring order to the chaotic
situation caused by the "cultural revolution".
"At present," he said, " There are a
great many problems which we cannot solve without
indomitable will. We must be determined and
daring." He called for efforts to bring about
stability and unity and to develop the national economy.
His conviction that this was that the country needed
reflected the interests and aspirations of the whole
nation, and to the people's great satisfaction,
noticeable results were achieved within a short period
of time. Nevertheless, while Mao Zedong supported Deng
Xiaoping in his administration of the day-to-day work of
the central organs, he could not tolerate Deng's
systematic correction of the mistakes arising from the
"cultural revolution". He therefore launched a
movement to criticize Deng and to counter the
"Right deviation of reversing correct
verdicts", which plunged the country into turmoil
again. Taking advantage of this situation, the Gang of
Four stepped in and framed Deng Xiaoping. They accused
him of having been the behind-the-scenes instigator of
the Tian'anmen Incident of April 5, 1976, in which the
people had poured out their love for the late Premier
Zhou Enlai and their hatred for the Gang of Four, Deng
was thus once again dismissed from all his posts inside
and outside the Party, and once again dark clouds hung
over the entire nation.
£Ushering
in a new stage£
Nineteen
seventy-six is a year the Chinese people will never
forget. Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Mao Zedong died one after
another, plunging the nation into mourning. Then in
October, to general rejoicing, the Central Committee
smashed the counter-revolutionary clique of the Gang of
Four. The ten-year "cultural revolution" that
had wreaked such havoc was finally brought to an end, and
the country entered a new period of its history.
The situation, however, was
dismaying. Hundreds of problems were crying for
solution, the "Left" thinking which had completely
dominated the country for so many years was now deeply
rooted and the economy was on the brink of collapse.
What road should China take from now on? This was the
question troubling millions upon millions of people.
The
new period and the new tasks called for the emergence of
a new leader. Since Deng had made valuable contributions
during the long revolutionary years, had waged a
resolute struggle against the Gang of Four and had
already achieved notable success in his efforts to
restore order, he had earned enormous prestige in the
Party and among the people. With the strong backing of
Ye Jianying and other veterans and in accordance with
the People's wishes, in July 1977, at the Third Plenary
Session of the Tenth Central Committee, Deng was
reinstated as Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee,
Vice-Premier of the State Council, Vice-Chairman of the
Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of
the People's Liberation Army. In march 1978 he was
elected Chairman of the Fifth national Committee of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
The
ten years of turmoil had made more and more people
realize that it was high time to repudiate
"Left" thinking and to set things to rights.
Deng lived up to the people's expectations and displayed
his far-sightedness as a strategist. Faced with a
multitude of problems in every area, he soon came to
understand that the key to them all was correct
ideology. He explicitly understood as an integral whole,
he emphasized that its essence was seeking truth from
facts, and accordingly he strongly opposed the "two
whatevers" (the view that whatever policy decisions
Chairman Mao had made and whatever instructions he had
given must be followed unswervingly). He encouraged
discussion on the criterion of truth, with the result
that the rigid bonds that had constricted people's
thinking for so long were broken. People both inside and
outside the Party began to seriously examine the current
situation and to tackle the problems they discovered.
This great movement to emancipate people's minds led to
the convocation of the Third Plenary Session of the
Party's Eleventh Central Committee.
This
Session, convened in December 1978, marked a fundamental
turning point in the history of the Chinese Communist
Party. At a working conference of the Central Committee
held before the Session, Deng delivered a speech which
turned out to be the keynote of the Third Plenary. In
this speech he explained in detail that people should
emancipate their minds and seek truth from facts. Just
as the Chinese people had followed this principle in the
past in making revolution, so now, he said, they must
rely on it in construction. In accordance with this
principle, the Plenary Session discarded the notion that
in a socialist society class struggle remained the
"key link" and made the strategic decision to
shift the focus of the Party's work to socialist
modernization, so as to concentrate on development of
the productive forces. Deng stressed that the Chinese
people should be dedicated and steadfast in pursuit of
socialist modernization and not let themselves be
hindered by interference from any quarter. This was a
fundamental rectification of the political line, and it
ushered in a new era of reform and opening to the
outside world.
In
March 1979 Deng made it clear that to maintain the
correct orientation in the modernization drive it was
essential to adhere to the Four Cardinal Principles:
keeping to the socialist road and upholding the
dictatorship of the proletariat (the people's democratic
dictatorship), leadership by the Communist Party and
Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
Deng
insisted that to ensure the implementation of the
ideological and political lines, a correct
organizational line must be established. He was
particularly concerned about ensuring the selection of
successors to ageing cadres. At his urging, a series of
measures were adopted to build up a contingent of their
generation. These cadres would replace some of their
older comrades and work in cooperation with those who
would remain. In this way the system of life tenure for
leading cadres would gradually be abolished, and the age
structure within the ranks of leading cadres would
become more and more appropriate.
These
efforts to rationalize the ideological, political and
organizational lines set China back on the path of
normal development. This was the prerequisite for
carrying out socialist modernization and the policies of
reform and opening to the outside would.
In
order to set things to rights and overcome
"Left" mistakes it was necessary to clear up
the confusion in people's minds about how to evaluate
the historical role of Mao Zedong. For this reason the
Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee
adopted a resolution on the subject, entitled
"Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of
Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of
China". It was Deng who presided over the drafting
of this landmark document. While completely condemning
the "cultural revolution" and the wrong
guidelines on which it was based, the resolution made a
comprehensive evaluation of Mao's historical role,
affirming that his contributions were primary and his
mistakes secondary. It distinguished between Mao Zedong
Thought--the crystallization of collective wisdom and
the product of scientific theory confirmed by
practice-and the mistakes Mao made in his later years,
emphasizing the need to uphold and develop the former.
This resolution helped greatly to unify the thinking of
the whole Party and to ensure political unity and
stability throughout the country.
In
September 1982, following the initial successes in
socialist modernization and in implementation of reform
and the open policy, the Party held its Twelfth National
Congress. At that Congress Deng summed up China's recent
historical experience and drew a basic conclusion: the
universal truth of Marxism must be integrated with the
concrete realities of China, and China must blaze a
trail of its own, building socialism with Chinese
characteristics.
To do
that it is essential to correctly understand China's
historical stage. On this question the Communist Party
has recently made a systematic, theoretical statement:
China is now at the primary stage of socialism.
Throughout this stage the basic line of the Party in
building socialism with Chinese characteristics is as
follows: to lead the people of all our nationalities in
a united, self-reliant, intensive and pioneering effort
to turn China into a prosperous, strong, democratic,
culturally advanced and modern socialist country by
making economic development the central task while
adhering to the Four Cardinal Principles and persevering
in reform and the open policy.
Deng said later,
"Socialist modernization is our basic line. To
carry it out and make China prosperous we must, first,
carry out the policies of reform and opening to the
outside world, and we must, second, adhere to the Four
Cardinal Principles, the most important of which are to
uphold leadership by the party and to keep to the
socialist road, opposing bourgeois liberalization and a
turn to capitalism. These two points are
interrelated."
Just
as Deng Xiaoping was the first to articulate the Four
Cardinal Principles, he was the first to propose and
insist that China undertake reform, adopt an open policy
and invigorate the economy. Ever since the Third Plenary
Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, he has been
actively promoting the reform. Because 80 per cent of
China's population lives in the countryside, it was
there that |
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