The pragmatic survivor who became China's paramount leader after Mao Zedong's death — twice purged and twice restored — and who, without serving as party chairman, general secretary, or state president, reversed much of Maoist economic policy, launched the 'reform and opening' that built a market economy under one-party rule, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in a single generation, and, as paramount leader, backed the decision to send the army against the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, a crackdown that remains heavily censored inside China.
Deng Xiaoping was purged twice and came back twice, which earned him a reputation as the man you could not keep down. During the Cultural Revolution, his son was persecuted by Red Guards and left paralyzed after falling, or being forced, from a window; Deng himself was sent to labor in a tractor factory. Within years he was running the country. He never took the top title, yet he set China's course for two decades. He opened it to the market and the world, and hundreds of millions climbed out of poverty in one generation. He also, in June 1989, backed sending the army into Beijing's streets. Both belong to the same man, and to the China he built.