Where did Deng Xiaoping grow up and live?

📍Guang'an, Sichuan, China

1904 – 1997

“I was born Deng Xiaoping on the 22nd of August 1904 in Guang'an, a county in Sichuan province in southwestern China. I went to France as a work-study student at sixteen, became a communist, returned to China, survived the Long March, and rose to the senior ranks of the Party. I was purged three times — twice during the Cultural Revolution — and each time I returned. I became China's paramount leader after Mao's death and launched the reform and opening that transformed China from a poor revolutionary state into the world's second largest economy. I said it doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. The Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989 is the part of my legacy that I cannot escape. Guang'an, the Sichuan countryside, was the small beginning of a very large story.”

👍 LovedThe reform and opening that lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. The pragmatism — the cat that catches mice — that broke with ideological rigidity. The restoration after three purgings.

👎 DislikedThe Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989. The decision to maintain political authoritarianism while liberalising the economy. The question of whether the cat metaphor applied to human rights.

Map showing where Deng Xiaoping lived — Guang'an, Sichuan, China

🗺️ Approximate location today

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Vogel, E. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011), Harvard University Press; Evans, R. Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China (1993), Hamish Hamilton