Word: teng
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...Teng seems to have recognized the tumble-down state of Chinese learning. Today there are only about 630,000 university students in a population of 1 billion. Nationwide examinations for admission to universities were dropped in 1966 as part of the egalitarianism of the Cultural Revolution. Now they have not only been reinstated, but they have become rigorous and uniform. Elite schools have been established and given the best teachers and facilities. Among teachers, ranks and titles have been restored. Salary increases and other perquisites have been adopted. But the intellectual infrastructure of China is still cripplingly weak...
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...
...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...
...Teng still speaks, in a shrill tenor, with the thick accent of Szechwan, a province of central China known for its spicy cuisine, gentle climate and soaring, mountainous scenery. Little is known of Teng's early life or, for 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...