Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping (, also UK: ; courtesy name Xixian; 22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese politician who was the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 until his retirement in 1992. After Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng led China through far-reaching market-economy reforms and has been called the "Architect of Modern China."Born into a peasant background in Sichuan province, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he became a follower of Marxism–Leninism. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1923. Upon his return to China, he joined the party organization in Shanghai, then was a political commissar for the Red Army in rural regions and by the late 1930s was considered a "revolutionary veteran" because he participated in the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet and the southwest region to consolidate Communist control. As the party's Secretary General in the 1950s, Deng presided over Anti-Rightist Campaigns and became instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward of 1957–1960. However, his economic policies caused him to fall out of favor with Mao Zedong and he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution.Following Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng outmaneuvered the late chairman's chosen successor Hua Guofeng in December 1978. Inheriting a country beset with social conflict, disenchantment with the Communist Party and institutional disorder resulting from the chaotic policies of the Mao era, Deng became the paramount figure of the "second generation" of party leadership. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary (leader of the Communist Party), some called him "the architect" of a new brand of thinking that combined socialist ideology with free enterprise whose slogan was "socialism with Chinese characteristics". Deng opened China to foreign investment and the global mar