Deng Xiaoping

Abstract

The nature of Deng Xiaoping’s developmental socialism is said to be difficult to pin down (Dittmarr, 1993, pp. 3, 21).¹ Scholarly discussion generally divides itself into two groups. The first group maintains that Deng’s politics represents a restoration of rational Maoism, though there is disagreement over which Maoist elements laid the foundation for Deng’s policies. One position within this group, especially prominent in the early 1980s, argued that the principal difference between the two men was to be found in the ideological debate between ‘redness’ and ‘expertness’ long present in CCP discussions.

Although Deng Xiaoping’s ‘pragmatic, “whatever works” kind of socialism’ … has often been adduced to support the contention that as political leaders go, he is not very ‘ideological’, it would be a great mistake to infer from this that ideology plays no role at all in the shaping of his policies. The fact is, Deng’s reforms are guided by a very potent ideology — we may call it an ideology of ‘authoritarian modernization’ — and it is precisely this ideology that Deng shares with his non-Communist predecessors. (Cohen, 1988, p. 535)