Still in the shadows

Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life.By Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine.Oxford University Press; 610 pages; $34.95 and £22.99.

BIOGRAPHERS of Communist-era leaders in China face enormous challenges. Since Mao Zedong took control of the country in 1949 its most powerful figures have hardly ever given interviews to journalists. Those who have lived or worked closely with these politicians tend either to sing their praises, condemn them out of hand (usually from the safety of exile) or, in most cases, keep quiet. Official policy documents, even secret ones, are often coloured by the biases of their drafters, whose aim may be to distort or exaggerate a leader’s preferences in order to promote the interests of a faction. A plethora of rumour clouds the picture further.

Writing about the life of Deng Xiaoping is one of the toughest challenges of all. For stretches of his career Deng was among Mao’s closest henchmen; separating his views at the time from those of Mao is fiendishly difficult. From 1978, two years after Mao’s death, until the early 1990s, Deng’s was the hand that guided China’s extraordinary economic transformation. Yet during this period he often operated behind the scenes; others held the post of Communist Party chief. After his retirement in 1989, he continued to play an important role with no more title than...

from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Jlrh8Q