Word: deng
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...Moscow the crimes of Stalin have been reported and officially confirmed for years. The unrepentant Chinese government is still much more secretive and reluctant to provide ammunition for its critics. But two new books -- The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng by Harrison E. Salisbury (Little, Brown; 544 pages; $24.95) and The Claws of the Dragon: Kang Sheng by John Byron and Robert Pack (Simon & Schuster; 560 pages; $27.50) -- indicate that glasnost is coming, inexorably, to Beijing. They provide the most detailed and personal accounts so far of the chaos, cruelty and corruption that Mao Zedong...
When his old comrade Defense Minister Peng Dehuai told him the facts, Mao declared him an enemy, fired him and replaced him with Marshal Lin Biao (also apparently a drug addict). The country went bankrupt, and President Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, General Secretary of the Communist Party, took over day-to- day control to restore the economy...
...concluded that Liu and Deng planned to force him into retirement -- and he may have been right. In 1965 Mao decided Liu "had to go." The weapon he chose was the Cultural Revolution, "a revolution against his own revolution." It was conducted by his harridan wife Jiang Qing and plotted by his favorite ideologist, security specialist and pimp, Kang Sheng...
Jiang and Kang loosed the young Red Guards on a murderous rampage that destroyed Liu's government and Deng's party. Thousands, if not millions, were killed. Lin became Mao's heir, but soon fell under suspicion of trying to turn Mao into a powerless figurehead. To avoid his own arrest, Lin attempted a putsch that failed. Premier Zhou Enlai was left in charge, but he too ended up in Jiang's sights as she maneuvered to succeed...
...Deng, purged twice during the Cultural Revolution, was finally returned to power in what Salisbury calls a military coup. One of the most powerful old marshals, Ye Jianying, brought his army colleagues together and decided that when Mao died, they would arrest Jiang and her cohort. Kang died of cancer in December 1975, and Zhou a month later. When Mao finally died at 82 in September 1976, Ye clapped the venomous widow into prison and summoned Deng from his rural exile...