Living Revolution | Enemies

A Swarm of Uglies

Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), then the General Secretary of the Communist Party, is seen in a sedan chair, holding several playing cards. He was well-known for his bridge-playing. A member of China's older revolutionary generation that included Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and others, Deng had been a key political figure since the 1950s. Purged during the Cultural Revolution, he was reinstated in the early 1970s to run the Chinese economy; he was purged by Mao again in 1976 and reinstated once more after Mao's death. He quickly became the central political leader in China and the guiding force behind the nation's economic transformation in the 1980s and early 1990s.