Deng: A Political Biography

In this academic but vivid biography, Chinese scholar and Harvard research fellow Yang profiles Deng Xiaoping (1904-1995) as a shrewd, resourceful politician who came to power through his constant sharp appraisal of Mao's state of mind. Filled with ever-deepening contempt for Mao's benighted policies, Deng turned millions of landless peasants into landowners; yet, as China's absolute ruler, he lacked the hands-on control to follow through on his economic modernizations, in Yang's estimate. The author, a schoolmate of Deng's two sons at Beijing University and a Red Guard comrade of one of them during the Cultural Revolution, evinces restrained admiration for Deng's reformist drive, though he doesn't let us forget the sins and shortcomings of a dictator who, 32 years before the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, launched a massive purge that sent close to a million ""rightists""--liberals, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, pro-democracy leaders--to labor camps and death. Besides offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the Communist Party's internecine power struggles, this biography, written with a Chinese brand of playful irony, is peppered with dramatic personal glimpses, as when Deng's common-law wife Ah Jin denounced him before a 1933 party congress and declared that she was ""cutting off relations"" with him. (Jan.)