On 22 July 1977, party elders brought Deng Xiao Ping back from exile. By the next year he was China’s paramount leader.
For many in the west, Deng’s role as reformer was tarnished by his eventual support for the hardline response of 1989 known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
History can be ironic. Deng’s fall from power arose from a 1976 protest called the Tiananmen Incident. The Gang of Four, led by Mao Zedong’s soon-to-be widow, labelled the protest counterrevolutionary and claimed that Deng had planned it. He apparently replied that he was at the square to get a haircut.
At her own trial, Madam Mao famously said “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite.” She was a loyal dog. The day before her suicide in 1991, she wrote:
Today the revolution has been stolen by the revisionist clique of Deng… Chairman, your student and co-fighter is coming to see you now.
I cannot say whether Deng followed the UK singles charts. He should have. On that 22 July in 1977, Hot Chocolate’s “So you win again” was ending its three-week run, with Donna Summer’s “I feel love” replacing it the next day.
define the modern world.