CHINA:Ten years after his death, views on former leader Deng Xiaoping are mixed, but most see him as having been a positive force, writes Clifford Coonan
Deng Xiaoping, the Communist leader credited with opening China up to the outside world and reforming the economy, remains a popular figure in China 10 years after his death, but people are divided about whether his reforms have been truly positive for Chinese society.
The reaction among Chinese people to the changes instigated by the diminutive, chain-smoking, famously pragmatic Deng, is broadly positive, but there are reservations about the pace of change.
A dedication to "Comrade Xiaoping" on the Xinhua news agency to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death describes him as a leader "who changed the course of the world by steering the country's class-orientated revolutionary struggle into tangible economic development".
His legacy has been the creation of the fastest growing major economy in the world, overseen by the single-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
"Deng is an emblem of a special age in China. For a long time he will be a pillar of the Chinese spirit and he opened a new period on China's development road because of the project of 'reform and opening-up'."
As a result, he is seen as a saviour by some Chinese," said Du Linlin, an 18-year-old secondary school student in Guangdong province.
Deng is particularly popular in the Chinese south. Crucial to his reformist platform was his "southern tour" of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai in 1992, in which he outlined his ideas for economic regeneration.
Li Jian, a Beijing university student, credits Deng as the architect of reform in China, saying: "He played an important role in the process of Chinese development, especially on the road from the foundation of the state to its current development."
Following Marxist categories, Deng believed China was at the primary stage of socialism and that the duty of the party was to perfect "socialism with Chinese characteristics".
But his pragmatism was legendary, and he once silenced debate about whether his economic reform programme was capitalist or socialist by saying: "It does not matter whether it is a black cat or a white cat. As long as it can catch the mouse it is a good cat."
Wunan, a 25-year-old student studying abroad, believes Deng has changed lives in China completely but that the country now faces tremendous challenges in its development process.
"Because of 'reform and opening-up', the standard of living has increased at an exponential rate. It cannot be denied that Deng has great influence on people's lives. What's more, Deng has impacted the whole world because he encouraged Chinese to go abroad," says Wunan, but adds that the widening gap between rich and poor is a problem.
Not everyone is happy about economic reform in China. One 50-year-old worker in Beijing, who gave her name as Mrs Wang, said the process of opening-up had made Beijing less secure than before.
"More and more migrant workers are flooding into the big city. And as a result, the crime rate has sharply increased. I wouldn't mind living back in the Mao era, even though we had a poor life," she said.
The small number of dissenting voices in China complain that despite economic freedoms, restrictions on individual liberty are more strictly enforced than ever, with little press or internet freedom.
Deng's decision to crack down on the student protesters on Tiananmen Square in 1989 killed the pro-democracy movement and probably preserved communist rule in China.
To those who feared a long-term negative reaction to the crackdown, he said the West always forgets such things, and he was proven right.
Deng was born to a prosperous family in the southwestern province of Sichuan in 1904. He studied in France and then in Moscow, where he earned his revolutionary credentials. He was a close ally of Mao's during the civil war and was no stranger to adversity.
This continued even after the revolution in 1949. Even though he was a protégé of the leader, Deng and his family suffered greatly during the cultural revolution of the late 1960s, and he became a leading target, alongside Liu Shaoqi, being labelled "China's No 2 Capitalist Roader". His son Deng Pufang, then a student of physics at Beijing University, was persecuted with such violence by the Red Guards that he is still confined to a wheelchair.
Deng returned to Beijing after Mao's death and the trial of the "Gang of Four", and worked his way back into pole position. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of his first priorities was to put an end to the cult of personality around Mao.
Officially, he retired from the top level of politics in 1992, but he was always widely regarded as the paramount leader until his death from a lung infection and Parkinson's disease on February 19th, 1997, aged 92.