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A billboard of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
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Deng Xiaoping Was China’s George Washington

In the first of two parts, a Naval War College professor of strategy compares China’s communist revolution to U.S. history.
By James Holmes
January 2020
Proceedings
Strategy Matters
View Issue
Comments

Comparing historical figures enlightens even when it discomfits. No American relishes comparing a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln to, say, a tyrant such as Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. Yet likenesses between foreign leaders and the greats of U.S. diplomatic and military history can be striking and informative. Ferreting out differences repays the effort as well.

Exhibit A: Deng Xiaoping. Beginning in the late 1970s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) premier played a part in China’s national development similar in noteworthy respects to the part Washington played in the early U.S. republic. In particular, Deng masterminded China’s “reform and opening” project, an initiative designed to rejuvenate the country’s moribund economy and clean up the wreckage from founding CCP chairman Mao Zedong’s cataclysmic reign.

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James Holmes headshot

James Holmes

Dr. Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and the author of A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy (Naval Institute Press, 2019). The views voiced here are his alone.

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