Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping, who lived from 1904 to 1997, was a Chinese revolutionary and statesman who served as paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1989. Born in Sichuan, he studied and worked in France, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1924, and served as a political commissar in the Chinese Red Army during the Long March and the Second Sino-Japanese War. He took part in the People's Liberation Army capture of Nanjing in 1949. After Mao Zedong's death he guided the reform and opening up that moved China toward a market economy. As leader he sought American approval for China's 1979 invasion of Vietnam in the Sino-Vietnamese war, and he ordered the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests.