ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a few remarks on Deng’s life and career. It presents a brief summary of Deng’s philosophy (or Dengism), particularly his basic strategies regarding Chinese politics—domestic and international, current and long term. The prospects for Communist China as a country and for Chinese communism as a political system in the foreseeable future are considered. In his later years Deng Xiaoping served as a political buffer or safety valve while China maintained its pace and manner of economic growth. The political system, the one-party monopoly of government power, is left as the quintessential characteristic of Chinese communism which Deng stubbornly refused to change; but it will change, sooner or later. Some predictions about China in the perspective of the world economy and world politics might be interesting and one should remember again the fundamental fact that China has by far the largest land mass in the Eastern Hemisphere and still has the largest population in the world.
