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Opinion | If Deng Xiaoping were alive, he would worry about China’s shifting priorities

Deng’s guiding philosophy of the centrality of economic development is rarely mentioned now, and has become secondary to national security

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Illustration: Craig Stephens

What would Deng Xiaoping think of China if he were alive today? That question has lingered in my mind ever since I joined tens of millions of Chinese on August 22 in marking his 120th birth anniversary.

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The question is as relevant and important as it is sentimental and rhetorical.

Today’s Chinese owe so much to the diminutive reformist leader who ended China’s self-imposed isolation and unleashed reforms in the late 1970s to allow private entrepreneurship to flourish and open up the country to foreign investment, paving the way for China’s economic lift-off.

Now that China is at a crossroads again, amid widespread concerns over the direction of the country and the state of its economy, remembering Deng has taken on a special significance.

Deng, who died in 1997 at the age of 92, would have been heartened but unsurprised to see that China’s economy has become the world’s second largest, as the country’s successive leaders vowed to carry the torch and honour his legacy.

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On August 22, Chinese President Xi Jinping led senior officials in an elaborate ceremony to pay tribute to Deng and lavish praise on the chief architect of China’s reform and opening up, also a great internationalist who made major contributions to world peace and development. They vowed that they would continue to advance the cause Deng initiated and apply his theory to real-world problems.
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