Deng Xiaoping: My Father

Told by his youngest daughter, the story of Deng Xiaoping is interwoven with modern Chinese history, tracing his sixty-year career from birth in a village in Sichuan province to a position of key leadership in the Communist party.

Written by his youngest daughter (Deng Xiaoping has three daughters and two sons), this biography of the 90-year-old Chinese leader is worthwhile for the basic information it provides about his life from his birth in 1904 to the founding of Communist China in 1949 (the period from his 45th year to the present is only briefly summarized), but Western readers will grow impatient with Deng Maomao's adoring praise of a man she considers flawless. In prose that often reads as though written by a propaganda committee (one suspects that the sections on Party history were, judging by the abrupt changes in style), Deng Maomao applauds Deng Xiaoping's exemplary behavior as a child in Sichuan Province, his experiences in France in a work-study program, his contributions as editor of Red Star and political commissar during the anti-Japanese and civil wars of the 1930s and '40s. The names of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai are evoked often, but readers learn little that is new about them; and much of what is revealed about Deng Xiaoping himself is trivial (e.g., he enjoyed watching soccer matches in France and "loved his children"). The essential speciousness of the book is clearest in the description of the Chinese Army's rape of Tibet as a peaceful liberation in which Tibetan culture was protected and respected. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Aged 90 and retired from his official posts in the People's Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping seems an enigmatic figure to most Westerners, less easily categorized than the more vivid Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Publisher interest is high, however, with five studies of Deng's China since Harrison Salisbury's double biography of Mao and Deng, The New Emperors (1992). There are two obvious arguments against acquiring this volume: Deng Maomao, Party member, diplomat, and adviser to her now-retired father, is almost painfully respectful of his accomplishments; and the book covers only the first half of the Communist leader's life, from his birth in 1904 to the establishment of the People's Republic, the last 45 years of power to be covered in a second volume. Still, where interest in China and its leaders is strong, this inside story of the man who would in some ways change his nation as profoundly as Mao did will have considerable appeal. Deng Maomao's book clearly represents the approved "line" on China's past century and other biographers will no doubt tell a truer story of Deng's life, but his daughter's narrative will supply at least some of the details. Mary Carroll

Deng Xiaoping's daughter reflects on the forces that shaped her father. This is "less a biography than an elucidation of historical context."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.