ABSTRACT
Deng Xiaoping was the most important leader of China following the death of Mao Tse-Tung. Deng was born Deng Xiansheng in Chinas southwest province of Sichuan on August 22, 1904. He attended high school in the provincial capital of Chongqing, and in 1920 he took the unusual step of traveling to France, both to work and to study. In Soviet Russia Deng attended Sun Yat-sen University and officially joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), changing his first name to Xiaoping. Deng returned to China late in 1926 to participate in an ongoing revolution being waged by an alliance between the CCP and the nationalist Kuomintang Party. Deng's economic reforms increased the wealth of many ordinary Chinese. The Communist Party had better success repressing demands for political liberalization. Deng feared that if the CCP sanctioned a more open political culture, communism in China could possibly suffer the same fate as the now-dissolved Soviet system.
