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I dont pretend to know a lot about Chinese history so it was with pleasure that I accepted an invitation by a few of my students to take me to see Deng Xiaoping's Revolutionary Base and learn a little about the man that we have all heard of....but for me, never quite sure why.
A member of the Chinese Communist Party since his youth, Deng Xiaoping is regarded as having rendered outstanding service to the Chinese people, throughout the revolution, during the development of the People's Republic and especially in the years after the disastrous "cultural revolution", it has been said that he succeeded in setting the country on the road to socialist modernization.
To save the revolution, the Communist Party launched a series of armed uprisings (Nanning, Guangzhou) against the reactionary Kuomintang regime. In the summer of 1929 after the defeat at Nanning Deng and Zhang Yunyi pulled the three Communist-controlled detachments out Nanning and led them to the Zuojiang and Youjiang areas. In December, he launched the Baise Uprising, founding the Youjiang Soviet Government and the Seventh Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and Secretary of its Front-line Committee. In February of the following year, he launched the Longzhou Uprising, creating the Zuojiang Soviet Government and the Eighth Army. In the Youjiang area they mobilized the masses to expropriate local tyrants, distribute land, carry out agrarian revolution and establish revolutionary governments at various levels. As a result, the local Red Army forces were expanded to cover some 29 counties with a population totaling more than one million, thus the Youjiang area became one of the largest communist revolutionary bases.
In his long career as a revolutionary Deng Xiaoping has enjoyed many victories and has also been through severe tests including the failure of the Baise Uprising to meet its objective. On more than one occasion he was subjected to unjust attack simply because he refused to abandon “correct” views, this, however, only increase the respect in which he was held, and ultimately he became the nation's chief policy-maker.
A visit to his revolutionary base in Baise City with my students reinforced to me that Deng Xiaoping has earned the respect and affection of millions of his countrymen. My students spoke with true pride as they described the various exhibits, translated many of the words and showed me through the base. It really bought history to life hearing it and seeing this site with my students – one very memorable day. I can only hope my recollections as written here are accurate.
A member of the Chinese Communist Party since his youth, Deng Xiaoping is regarded as having rendered outstanding service to the Chinese people, throughout the revolution, during the development of the People's Republic and especially in the years after the disastrous "cultural revolution", it has been said that he succeeded in setting the country on the road to socialist modernization.
To save the revolution, the Communist Party launched a series of armed uprisings (Nanning, Guangzhou) against the reactionary Kuomintang regime. In the summer of 1929 after the defeat at Nanning Deng and Zhang Yunyi pulled the three Communist-controlled detachments out Nanning and led them to the Zuojiang and Youjiang areas. In December, he launched the Baise Uprising, founding the Youjiang Soviet Government and the Seventh Army of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army and Secretary of its Front-line Committee. In February of the following year, he launched the Longzhou Uprising, creating the Zuojiang Soviet Government and the Eighth Army. In the Youjiang area they mobilized the masses to expropriate local tyrants, distribute land, carry out agrarian revolution and establish revolutionary governments at various levels. As a result, the local Red Army forces were expanded to cover some 29 counties with a population totaling more than one million, thus the Youjiang area became one of the largest communist revolutionary bases.
In his long career as a revolutionary Deng Xiaoping has enjoyed many victories and has also been through severe tests including the failure of the Baise Uprising to meet its objective. On more than one occasion he was subjected to unjust attack simply because he refused to abandon “correct” views, this, however, only increase the respect in which he was held, and ultimately he became the nation's chief policy-maker.
A visit to his revolutionary base in Baise City with my students reinforced to me that Deng Xiaoping has earned the respect and affection of millions of his countrymen. My students spoke with true pride as they described the various exhibits, translated many of the words and showed me through the base. It really bought history to life hearing it and seeing this site with my students – one very memorable day. I can only hope my recollections as written here are accurate.
- comments
Ray H Ming's father was an officer with the Kuomintang and a friend of Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai . The three had studied together in a University in France. Of course they went their own way, with Ming's dad ending up in a re-education camp. Later got out through the intervention of Ming's mother becoming friends with Zhou Enlai's wife. Ming's dad then became a Uni lecturer. There's a good book written about Deng Xiaoping's life by his youngest daughter, Deng Maomao, called "Deng Xiaoping - My Father". (Deng Xiaoping had 5 children). A very good read. Deng Maomao and her husband later worked in the PR China's embassy in the USA.
Kate Wow Ray......what a small world we live in....its things like this that really bring it home to us
Ray H G'day Kate. Yes it is a small world. The thing I felt most in my trips to China, when away from the main cities, was the intangible feeling of history. All our lives whilst living in Tas/Aust. history is like a story from a book or on TV. It's strange when you travel to places where points of history has actually evolved, you really get this strong and strange feeling of "history and tradition", like "Marco Polo walked this alleyway" etc. Have you felt that feeling? xox