Chronology

• 1904: Deng Xiaoping is born in Sichuan Province, China. He is the first-born son of a Hakka landowner.
• 1920: Deng graduates from Chongqing Preparatory School and he travels with about 80 of his fellow graduates to France to study. He is about 16 years old. Deng has to work in a factory to support himself. He becomes a machinist. He joins a socialist youth organization.
• 1924: He returns to China and joins the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He becomes an instructor at the Military and Political Academy in Xi'an.
• 1926: He spends a year in Moscow undergoing Marxist training. At the end of the year he returns to southern China.
• 1929: He becomes an organizer of the Communist enclave in Guangxi Province in southern China. That enclave failed and Deng joined an enclave led by Mao Zedong in Jiangxi Province.
• 1933: Due to internal rivalries in the Communist Party Deng is denounced and dismissed from all political offices. He is placed under arrest. His wife divorces him.
• 1934-35: Deng participates in the Long March and serves as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.
• 1945-1949: Deng was a leader in the Second Field Army.
• 1950: Deng travels with Mao Zedong and other top leaders of the Communist Party to Moscow to meet with Stalin. Deng engages some of the Soviet Marxist ideologists in debate and holds his own.
• 1952: He is appointed Vice Premier in the government of the People's Republic of China.
• 1956: He is made a member of the Politburo of the CCP. Deng is made head of the Secretariat of the CCP.
• 1965-1972: Deng is denounced during the Great Cultural Revolution and is sent to work in a factory as a machinist. During the Cultural Revolution Deng's son is thrown from a second floor window and becomes paralized from the waist down.
• Early 1973: Deng Xiaoping is rehabilitated and brought back to organize the recovery.
• Mid 1973 to mid 1974: Jiang Qing and her radicals are dominant in the government.
• July 1974: Mao shifts support to Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.
• Fall 1975: Mao shifts support back to Jiang Qing and her radicals. Deng Xiaoping is formally removed from power.
• April 1976: There are public tributes to Zhou Enlai in Tiananmen Square on April 2 which Jiang Qing declares to be counter-revolutionary. Authorities use the military to break up the public demonstrations. On April 7 Deng Xiaoping is suspended from all positions in the government.
• September 1976: Mao Zedong dies on the night of September 8-9.
• October 1976: Armed forces arrest Jiang Qing and her radical associates. They are called The Gang of Four to emphasize that they represent only a small cabal of radicals.
• July 1977: In July Deng Xiaoping restored to positions of power; Vice Premier, Vice Chairman of the CCP and Vice Chairman of the Military Commission and Army Chief of Staff.
• Late 1977:

  Deng Xiaoping

  Deng Xiaoping emerges as paramount leader of the People's Republic of China. Deng had been dropped from the leadership roles after the April 1976 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. As noted above, in July 1977 he returned to all his official positions and in addition he was the chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army. Deng's leadership was not a result of the formal offices he held but instead from a concensus among the top leaders to follow his lead, although it did not hurt for him to have control of the army. In the power struggle between Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng, Hua had the offices of Premiership and Party Chairmanship but Deng had the People's Liberation Army, the PLA. One army trumps two high political offices.

• August 1977: Deng Xiaoping calls for major reforms. These reforms are called the Four Modernizations.
• April 1978: Deng Xiaoping criticizes Party leadership by leftists.
• 1981: Deng becomes the chairman of the Central Military Commission.
• November, 1987: Deng retires from all posts except the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission
• April 1989: Deng condemns student demonstrations in Tianamen Square as "anti-Party, anti-socialist" turmoil.
• June 1989: PLA troops, with Deng's sanction, break up the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square with extensive loss of life, perhaps in the thousands.
• 1990-1997: Deng remains the paramount leader for a number of years gradually retiring from active political participation. In 1997 he died of respiratory complications associated with Parkinson's disease.