Deng Xiaoping a liberal...? He was anything but.

Deng Xiaoping was the kind of man who accepted no opinion but his own, and eradicated all dissent. I still like him, but that's purely because I'm not one of the dissenting voices.

I am amazed at how quickly American conservatives become apologists for communist hardliners.


Still, Deng had little to do with unification, nationalism and the end of the fractionalism. That was Mao and the revolution, I'm afraid. You would have to look very hard to find sectarian interests in 1971. Credit Deng with calming the majority, but silencing the minority was all Mao.