Deng Xiaoping: And the Making of Modern China by Richard EvansReview by: Donald ZagoriaForeign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1994), p. 169Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20045994 .
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Recent Books
Asia and the Pacific DONALD ZAGORIA
Deng Xiaoping: And the Making of Modern China, by richard evans.
New York: Vikng, 1994,327 pp. $27.95.
Despite the scarcity of reliable informa
tion about China's supreme leader, the
enormous difficulty of gaining access to
key documents, and the problems of
dealing with a country in which history is still viewed as a
political weapon, this
biography of Deng Xiaoping will be a reliable and valued guide for years to
come. Written by the former British
ambassador to China, Sir Richard Evans, a sinologist in his own right, the volume
is superbly researched, quite readable and
extremely judicious in its assessments.
Not the least of the author's accom
plishments is to place the rise of Deng within the context of the tumultuous
history of twentieth-century China?the
Japanese invasion, the rise of commu
nism, the Long March, the Great Leap
Forward, the innumerable struggles for
power within the Chinese Communist
Party, the Cultural Revolution and
Tiananmen Square. Evans says that Deng's greatest
achievements were to put China on a
path of rapid economic development and
to bring it into the mainstream of inter
national life. He sees three secrets of suc
cess in China's drive to development that
distinguish it from the failures of the former Soviet Union, first, China began
by reforming agriculture rather than
commerce or industry. This made food
and raw materials for light industry plen tiful and thereby created conditions con
ducive to change in the cities. Second, China avoided hyperinflation and a rapid decline in living standards by removing
price controls gradually, so that the con
sumer was not turned into an enemy of
reform. Third, economic reforms pre ceded political reform, which improves the chances that a more open political order will survive once it does come
about. According to Evans, democracy does best when it grows slowly in a devel
oping country and reaches maturity only when that country has achieved high lev
els of prosperity and education.
The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China, by Susan l. shirk. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993,
399 pp. $48.00 (paper, $15.00). A political scientist seeks to explain Deng Xiaoping's success and Mikhail Gor
bachev's failure in reforming a commu
nist economy by focusing on the political institutions that blocked reform in the
U.S.S.R. and facilitated it in China. The
key to effective reform, says the author, is
that reformist leaders need to develop an
effective pro-reform coalition and render
ineffective the groups that will lose as a
result of the reforms.
Gorbachev tried to develop a reform
coalition by opening up the political arena
to real competition and thereby developing a
counterweight to the anti-reform com
munist party apparatus. But this was a
highly risky strategy that eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet communist party.
To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 1-800-255-2665.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS - March/April 1994 [169]
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