Word: deng
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dawn of the Cultural Revolution, Mao wrote to his wife that after his death the rightists would seize power. But, he went on to assure her, leftists would soon take it back again. Deng and China have helped the first part of the prophecy to come true. For all their achievements, though, they know that the second part is by no means impossible...
...eight years since the death of Mao, Deng has installed the revolutionary notion that people produce more if offered incentives. Without upheaval or fanfare, without blatant feuds at the top or bloody purges at the grass roots, Deng and his pragmatic colleagues have brought about the most sweeping reforms ever attempted under the banner of Marxism. They have transformed the nation's agricultural system, awakened its cultural life and quintupled the income of millions of peasants. Their ambitions, moreover, seem almost limitless: they aim to quadruple the gross national product, double the nation's output of energy, and raise...
...Deng's regime has done little to eliminate corruption, repression or inertia, and has in fact given rise to some new problems. The swelling of riches in a few areas has made for inequity and envy. The open door has admitted a host of unhealthy and unwanted foreign influences. Many diehard Maoists, still entrenched in the bureaucracy or established in the military, have managed to resist, and even reverse, the new direction. Though China has, at last count, 1.1 billion people, its G.N.P. is less than half that of France (pop. 55 million). Above all, in its attempt to balance...
...basis of Deng's pragmatic philosophy is summed up in his oft quoted dictum "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." The practical effects of that maxim have centered on the area in which Mao made his costliest errors: agriculture. During 25 years in power, Mao channeled the vast bulk of all investment into heavy industry, while neglecting to ensure a corresponding rise in food production. At the same time, he encouraged his people to maintain the country's explosive birth rate. Because of this, and a striking rise...
Even before Deng effectively assumed power in January 1979, he began to experiment with a "contract" system of incentives for farmers. In just three years, that scheme boosted agricultural production in Sichuan province by 25% and industrial output by 80%. Encouraged by those startling results, Deng soon began replacing the Maoist commune, an unwieldy aggregation that often included tens of thousands of peasants, with a system of smaller economic units, sometimes no larger than a household...