EARLIER this year, as the Arab spring blew through the Middle East, nervous Chinese officials were heard asking Western diplomats and journalists whether they thought (off the record) that China would be next. As it turns out, China has been left unfazed by this mutinous trend for reasons ranging from internet censorship to the swift arrests of dissidents. But one important damper on protest has been in the works for a while: China's massive economic growth over the past few decades has left enough people satisfied with the system for now. Also, the country does not have a cultish figure like Hosni Mubarak or Colonel Muammar Qaddafi to act as a lightning rod for dissent.
For this the Chinese Communist Party has to thank a little chain-smoking man who died nearly a decade and a half ago: Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader from 1978 to 1992. Ezra Vogel's new biography portrays Deng as not just the maker of modern China, but one of the most substantial figures in modern history.
If Chairman Mao was the architect of an assertive, socialist China, Deng pulled off the even tougher feat of reversing most of what Mao had done and calling it “socialism”. Mr Vogel, a professor emeritus at Harvard University, has written a meticulously researched book that concentrates mainly on the story from the mid-1970s to the 1990s. He could have subtitled the book not the “transformation” but the “stabilisation” of China, as he describes Deng's impressive calming strategy at home and abroad. Deng placated the near and not-so-near neighbours whom Mao had angered or terrified, continuing his unfinished diplomacy with America (leading to one of history's most incongruous photo-ops as Deng donned a big cowboy hat), and mending bridges with the Soviet Union. A messy war with Vietnam in 1979 was the exception that proved the rule of avoiding military confrontation.
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