Deng Essay

Even though his reign was successful, Deng’s accomplishments can be counted as little more than damage control. Almost the entirety of what he did was done in order to reverse the devastation that had been caused by Chairman Mao.

While Chairman Mao was able to gain popularity through his unification of China, Deng did so by actually helping the Chinese people. Where Mao sought to gain total control over China and enforce his will, Xiaoping actively tried to help the Chinese people, mostly through fixing what Mao had done. Thus, under the guise of Marxism Deng was able to bring a small amount of capitalism back to China and in doing so turned the tide of starvation and poor living conditions that had been so prominent during Mao’s rule.

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By doing this Deng was able to successfully end the mass starvation caused by Mao’s grain requisition. Thus, where Mao gladly employed kill quotes and sent upwards of 70 million people to an early grave, Deng went out of his way to save millions.

One way that Deng did this was by enforcing what he called the Seven Employee Rule. What this entailed was that individuals were allowed to run a business but, they could not hire more than seven employees at a time otherwise they would be endorsing capitalism, though the rule was not strictly enforced. Deng justified this rule by stating that if Marx specifically criticized a man that employed eight people than hiring seven had to be okay. With this development Deng was able to fix some of the damage brought about by Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” which had previously prohibited privately owned businesses.

Another rule enforced by Chairman Mao stated that his citizens had to carry a “little red book” detailing some of his personal quotes with them at all times. Individuals were then often stopped by guards and forced to recite parts of the book and if they were unable to do so they were promptly