7 Deng Xiaoping 71925–26. He then returned to China and later became a
leading political and military organizer in the Jiangxi Soviet,
an autonomous Communist enclave in southwestern China
that had been established by Mao Zedong. Deng partici-
pated in the Long March (1934–35) of the Chinese
Communists to a new base in northwestern China. After
serving as the commissar (or political officer) of a division
of the Communists’ Eighth Route Army (1937–45), he was
appointed a secretary of the Central Committee of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1945 and served as
chief commissar of the Communists’ Second Field Army
during the Chinese Civil War (1947–49). After the
Communist takeover of China in 1949, Deng became the
regional party leader of southwestern China. In 1952 he
was summoned to Beijing and became a vice premier.
Rising rapidly, he became general secretary of the CCP in
1954 and a member of the ruling Political Bureau in 1955.
From the mid-1950s, Deng was a major policy maker in
both foreign and domestic affairs. He became closely
allied with such pragmatist leaders as Liu Shaoqi, who
stressed the use of material incentives and the formation
of skilled technical and managerial elites in China’s quest
for economic development. Deng thus came into increas-
ing conflict with Mao, who stressed egalitarian policies
and revolutionary enthusiasm as the key to economic
growth, in opposition to Deng’s emphasis on individual
self-interest.
Deng was attacked during the Cultural Revolution
(1966 –76) by radical supporters of Mao—later dubbed the
Gang of Four—and he was stripped of his high party and
government posts sometime in the years 1967– 69, after
which he disappeared from public view. In 1973, however,
Deng was reinstated under the sponsorship of Premier
Zhou Enlai and was made deputy premier. In 1975 he