{"id":14233,"date":"2024-06-28T06:30:22","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T06:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=14233"},"modified":"2024-06-25T09:52:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T09:52:17","slug":"jonathan-chatwin-deng-xiaoping-southern-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/jonathan-chatwin-deng-xiaoping-southern-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Jonathan Chatwin on Deng Xiaoping’s legendary Southern Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a freezing January afternoon in 1992, Deng Xiaoping, China\u2019s former paramount leader and now a revered elder statesman, set off on a month-long trip around China\u2019s south in defence of the reforms he had set in motion to open up China\u2019s economy and transform the country into the political and economic powerhouse we know today.<\/p>\n

In The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Fight for China\u2019s Future<\/em> (Bloomsbury Asian Arguments, 2024), Jonathan Chatwin travels 3,000 miles in the footsteps of Deng\u2019s legendary \u201csouthern tour\u201d, pursuing the stories of his journey and examining its legacies in the country today. Jonathan Chatwin is an independent writer whose last book, Long Peace Street<\/em> (Manchester University Press, 2019), retraced the history and development of Beijing\u2019s central west-east access Chang\u2019an Jie. Paul French caught up with Chatwin to talk Deng, legacy and how it\u2019s all remembered in today\u2019s China.<\/p>\n

\"launchpad<\/a><\/p>\n

Can you give us a quick explainer on the southern tour and why Deng saw it as so essential?<\/h4>\n

In 1988, there was an inflation crisis which led to the so-called \u2018conservatives\u2019 within the Chinese Communist Party leadership \u2013 named after their desire to \u2018conserve\u2019 a Soviet-style planned economy \u2013 imposing stricter controls on economic growth, slowing the freewheeling of the economy over the previous few years. This \u2018rectification\u2019 process continued after the Tiananmen protests, which seemed to those conservatives to confirm that economic liberalisation had been too much, too fast. Deng retired officially in November of 1989 but was determined that China shouldn\u2019t slow down its economic liberalisation \u2013 to him, the protests of June proved the need to continue making people\u2019s lives better in order to secure the authority of the party. He tried to reignite the economy in 1990 and 1991 but didn\u2019t manage to persuade the new leadership, so in January 1992, nine months before the all-important 14th Party Congress, he set off to two Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, as well as Shanghai, to make his case and try to pivot China back towards more ambitious reform and opening.<\/p>\n