#401 Deng's Transformations

Billboard featuring Deng Xiaoping in Lizhi Park, Shenzhen. Source: Wikimedia.

Preparation:

• Wasserstrom, 75-89.

• Deng Xiaoping, “Build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2, compiled by Wm. Theodore de Bary and 507-10.

Document-based discussion

• How might you characterize Deng’s attitude toward Mao in his speech? Are there perhaps multiple ways we might go about answering this question?
• What is Deng’s approach to socialism? Capitalism?
• Describe Deng’s goals and proposed methods. Evaluate whether or not they most resemble capitalism or socialism.

Student-guided discussion:

• In 1981, five years after Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution decade, Deng pronounced that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong.
• As as an international committee of historians, you have been asked to evaluate Deng Xiaoping’s time as the country’s most influential leader from 1978 to his death in 1997 and determine a similar formulation of what percent “right” and what percent “wrong” Deng was.
• To conduct your investigation, you will need to:
  • Define what you mean by “right” and “wrong.”
  • Identify all available evidence in Wasserstrom and place each piece of evidence into the “right” or “wrong” category.
  • Keeping in mind that not all information should necessarily be weighted equally, determine the relative weight of each side and translate that into the statement…
    • “Deng Xiaoping was ___% right and ___% wrong.”
• This activity will be entirely student directed.

Homework: #402