Word: inge
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Beginning with their arrest in October 1976, members of the radical Gang of Four, led by Mao's widow, Chiang Ch'ing, have been held responsible for everything from crop failures to the shortage of sidewalk cafes. Many of the accusations are justified. But in China now, when a foreigner mentions the Gang of Four, it often happens that the Chinese with whom he is talking will hold up five fingers and say, "Ah, yes, the Gang of Four." The small subversive joke reflects what most Chinese accept: that Mao not only permitted but encouraged the activities of his wife...
Henry Kissinger has no recollection of ever calling Teng Hsiao-p'ing "a nasty little man," the celebrated epithet with which the former Secretary of State is often credited. As Kissinger told TIME last week, "He struck me as extremely able and tough. He had great skill in handling the bureaucratic mechanisms. When I met him [in 1975], Teng had not concentrated very much on foreign policy, but he learned fast. He's a man of no mean consequence...
Some other world leaders held different views. Nikita Khrushchev ignored him when they met, despite Mao Tse-tung's accurate advice that the "little man" had "a great future ahead of him." Mao's wife, Chiang Ch'ing, despised him, and twice her radical supporters vilified him as China's most evil "capitalist reader." At one Politburo meeting in 1975, Mao asked all those in opposition to one of his proposals to stand up. When Teng did so, the Great Helmsman looked at him coldly and reportedly said, "Since I see nobody standing up, my proposal is unanimously adopted...
Even by Chinese standards, Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing is small in stature (4 ft. 11 in.). Psychologists might argue that his size explains in part Teng's life-long reputation for feistiness, irascibility and driving ambition. He is a highly emotional man, with a reputation for vengefulness. Teng is respected rather than loved by the Chinese, and appears to have cronies and allies rather than friends. For all that, he is China's great survivor; at 74 he has embarked with unflagging energy on the most intrepid political adventure of his life...
...that matter, of his private life today. He is believed to be the son of a landlord. He was born in 1904 in Hsieh-hsing, a village near China's wartime capital of Chungking. His given name was Kan Tse-kao, which he changed to Teng Hsiao-p'ing (an underground alias that means Little Peace) when he joined the Communist Party...