ABSTRACT
Deng Liqun, or Little Deng (Xiao Deng) as he was called to distinguish him from Old Deng (Lao Deng), Deng Xiaoping, was a leading ideological watchdog from the late 1970s. He honed his political skills as a disciple of Chen Boda, a prominent Party "ghost writer" and ideological hack, during the Yan'an purges of the early 1940s. By the early 1990s, Little Deng played the role of token Maoist in Party Central, one of his concerns being to concoct an official history of the People's Republic. In 1994, he was involved in the founding and publication of the very PC journal, Research Into Contemporary Chinese History (Dangdai Zhongguoshi yanjiu). Deng's was the voice of ideological rectitude and stability. His comically stilted language exudes a certain nostalgic charm for those familiar with the heyday of the wooden language of Chinese Communism. This interview first appeared in the December 1991 issue of Zhongliu, a magazine established by ideological revanchists following the 1989 purge.
