May I also point out that sorting out what may be the truth about any person or event in history is difficult. We read someone's historical work say, Ammianus, and then spend hours and hours attempting to work out what his pet prejudices may have been. So when I read Zinn's criticisms of Geo. Washington, do I take note or not?
So before I run out of time, let's start the first question, about Deng..
1. What did he do to help the communist movement? For example, was he a participant in the Long March? Did he subscribe to the Little Red Book?
In my first post, I'm going to state my reliance on Harrison Salisbury (The New Emperors, Mao and Deng, A Dual Biography), and then we can attempt to sort out his prejudices.
I will write without attempting to reference everything, but if you want sources, stop me and ask:
Deng went back to China from Sun Yat-Sen University in Moscow in 1927.
Was he a committed communist?
There are doubts. Professor Gao Mobo of Adelaide University, in Australia, has expressed those doubts ( The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution , London: Pluto, 2008. ) Certainly, Mao had doubts as indicated in his calling Deng, a 'capitalist roader.' Gao thinks of him as:
"Deng Xiaoping and many like him [in the Chinese Communist Party] were not really Marxists, but basically revolutionary nationalists who wanted to see China standing on equal terms with the great global powers. They were primarily nationalists and they participated in the Communist revolution because that was the only viable route they could find to Chinese nationalism."
The choice in post Sun Yatsen's China, was essentially the GMD (KMT) now run by Jiang Jiesie (Chiang Kai Shek) or a Warlord or the Ccommunist party. I believe that many people of the era, made the same choice, even though often for different reasons. The USA's concepts had been discarded, even by Sun Yat-sen, educated in Hawaii, but turnign away from the USA as a result of the nasty, vicious war that the US army fought against Philippino Nationalists. Before his death, Sun had sought the help of the Soviet Union.
(if you cant understand why, you could do worse than consider Pankaj Mishra's, From the Ruins of Empire, The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia, (Allen Lane, 2012).
Deng's military experience started, Salisbury writes, in 1929, when the CPC sent him out of Shanghai, as the GMD police were hot on his trail. He was ordered to try to form a peasant army to attack Guangdong. That never happened. The opposition was to strong. Recalled to Shanghai for on a conference on his failure, he was sent back to re-group and eventually ordered to join up with Mao and Zhu De in Hunan, recalled again to Shanghai, then back to the Red Army in Ruijin, where he became party secretary for the area.
It was a long way from there to Beijing, 1949. In those years Mao is reputed to have told Krushchev, "See that little man over there, (pointing to Deng), never underestimate him. During the (anti-Japanese war) he formed and trained two peasant armies."
That's enough for today.
