Teng Hsiao-p'ing (c. 1 902-) , Chinese Communist political officer who rose to become the chief executive officer of the Chinese Communist party, a vice premier in the Central People's Government, and a vice chairman of the National Defense Council. In 1966 he became one of the prime targets of Red Guard criticism in the so-called Cultural Revolution. Little is known about Teng Hsiao-p'ing's family background or early years except that his native place was Chiating (Loshan), Szechwan. He probably attended one of the new middle schools established at Chiating after the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905. Although the 1911 revolution had little if any impact on Teng's political consciousness, the May Fourth Movement of 1919 evidently did, for he joined the work-study movement (for details, see Li Shih-tseng). After attending classes at a special preparatory school in Chengtu, he went to Shanghai and thence to Europe early in 1920. There is no record of Teng's having attended classes at any school or university in France; nor is it clear what type of work he did there. Throughout the five years he spent in Europe he remained an obscure figure in the Chinese student politics of the day. From 1920 to 1925 he apparently was in Paris, where he learned French and joined the French branch of the Chinese Communist party. His only known political activity in Paris was producing the mimeographed Chinese Communist party weekly Ch'ih-kuang [red light], a task which earned him the title "doctor of mimeographing." After leaving France in 1925, Teng Hsiaop'ing went to the Soviet Union, where he reportedly spent several months attending classes at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. He may have returned to China in August 1926 in the company of Feng Yü-hsiang (q.v.). In any event, by late 1926 Teng had become a political instructor at the military school that Feng had established at Sanyuan, Shensi. Beginning in 1927 Teng was associated with the Li Li-san (q.v.) group in the Chinese Communist party at Shanghai. In July 1929, however, he was assigned to work in Kwangsi province, an inhospitable area because of its backwardness and because of the anti-Communist activities of Pai Ch'ung-hsi (q.v.). By year's end, Teng and other Communist organizers had organized the Seventh Army of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army, with headquarters at Paise (Poseh). During 1930 that unit, commanded by Chang Yün-yi with Teng Hsiao-p'ing as party representative, expanded its control in the mountainous districts of western Kwangsi. Working with Chuang tribal leaders in the infertile area along the Indo-China border southwest of Nanning, the Communists also succeeded in establishing a smaller soviet area on the right bank of the Yü River which provided the territorial base for the Eighth Red Army. Teng then returned to Shanghai to report on his progress. In the summer of 1930 he was ordered to return to Kwangsi to direct the transfer of the Communist forces there to Kiangsi, apparently in preparation for a push on the Wuhan cities. By the time he arrived there in September, however, the Eighth Red Army had been destroyed by the Kwangsi authorities. Leaving a Chuang guerrilla force behind, Teng and Chang Yün-yi made their way to the central soviet base area in Kiangsi. Beginning in 1932 Teng served as an official in the propaganda section of the general political department of the Communist military headquarters, editor of the army newspaper Hung-hsing [red star], and instructor at the Red Army Academy. He also held office as party secretary of Juichin hsien and, later, of Kiangsi. During the Kiangsi period he became associated with the Mao Tse-tung faction within the Chinese Communist party. He remained with Mao throughout the Long March of 1934-35.

Upon arrival at Shensi in the autumn of 1935, Teng was made political commissar with the First Front Army troops of P'eng Te-huai. With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war and the reorganization of the Chinese Communist forces in north China as the Eighth Route Army, Teng became political commissar in the 129th Division of Liu Po-ch'eng (q.v.). The 129th Division moved into Shansi in September 1937 and established a base in the T'aihang mountains north of Ch'angchih. This base, which provided the springboard for expansion southward into Honan and eastward into Shantung, gradually developed into what became known to the Communists as the Shansi- Hopei-Shantung-Honan Border Liberated Area. The major Communist achievement of the 1938-45 period was the phenomenally rapid expansion of a competing administrative system behind the Japanese lines which showed itself to be more effective, more responsive to popular opinion, and more concerned with basic reforms than was the National Government, then isolated in west China.

The role of Teng Hsiao-p'ing in this process of wartime expansion is unclear. All that is certain is that he was appointed to the Chinese Communist party's north China bureau in 1938, that he was made political commissar of the T'aihang military region in 1940, and that he was assigned to Yenan in 1943 to direct the general political department of the People's Revolutionary Military Council, then the top planning group in the Chinese Communist military establishment. At the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist party in 1945, Teng was elected to the party's Central Committee for the first time. He spent the 1946-49 civil war period as political commissar to Liu Po-ch'eng. Beginning in November 1948 he also served as secretary of the new general front command established by the Communists in the Hwai-Hai area. The Hwai-Hai engagement, which began on 7 November, ended in overwhelming victory for the Communists and cleared the way for their advance on Nanking and Shanghai.

Teng Hsiao-p'ing served at Chungking from 1950 to 1952 as vice chairman (under Liu Po-ch'eng) of the Southwest Military and Administrative Committee and secretary of the party's southwest bureau. In addition to his regional posts, he held membership in the Central People's Government Council and the People's Revolutionary Military Council. Teng was transferred to Peking in 1952 as a vice premier in the Central People's Government. In this post, he increasingly appeared as substitute spokesman for Chou En-lai when Chou was out of the country. From November 1952 to October 1954 Teng was a member of the State Planning Committee, and from September 1953 to June 1954 he also held office as minister of finance. He played an important role in the preparations for the 1954 reorganization of the central government, acting as secretary general of the Central Election Committee and serving on the committee charged with drafting the constitution and the national election law. At the time of the reorganization he was made a vice premier of the State Council and a vice chairman of the National Defense Council.

The most significant aspect of Teng Hsiaop'ing's career in the middle and late 1950's was his emergence at the top level of command in the Chinese Communist party. In May 1954 he was identified for the first time as secretary general (mi-shu-chang) of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party. When a national conference of the party was convened in March 1955 to deal with problems of leadership, political discipline, and economic planning, Teng gained national notice by delivering a major speech on the "anti-party faction" of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih (qq.v.). The following month, Teng and Lin Pao were elected to the party's Political Bureau. At the party's Eighth National Congress, held in September 1956, Teng presented a report on the new party constitution and emerged fourth (after Mao Tse-tung, Liu Shao-ch'i, and Lin Po-ch'ü) in the Central Committee rankings. On 28 September 1956 Teng was chosen general secretary (tsung shu-chi) of the party's Central Committee. He also was reelected to the Political Bureau, ranking sixth—after Mao, Liu, Chou En-lai, Chu Teh and Ch'en Yun.

In addition to his responsibilities as the chief executive officer of the Chinese Communist party, Teng Hsiao-p'ing became increasingly prominent in the handling of Peking's day-to-day relations with the international Communist movement. He met with virtually every major Communist leader who visited the People's Republic of China in the late 1950's and early 1960's, and he frequently journeyed to Moscow. In February 1956 he served as Chu Teh's deputy at the momentous Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and in November 1957 he accompanied Mao Tse-tung to Moscow for the fortieth anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution. Three years later, he served as deputy leader of the Chinese delegation, headed by Liu Shao-ch'i, to the forty-third anniversary celebrations. On 14 November 1960, at a gathering in Moscow for leaders from 81 Communist parties, Teng called Nikita Khrushchev a liar and proclaimed that the Chinese Communist party was duty-bound to break ranks and develop a new line on international policy if the "present Soviet leadership" continued to stray from the high road of orthodox virtue. Sino-Soviet party relations continued to deteriorate in the early 1960's, and in July 1963 Teng flew to Moscow for talks with Mikhail A. Suslov. Although the meetings were fruitless, Teng was welcomed at the airport on his return to China by virtually all Peking's major leaders.

As the so-called Cultural Revolution began to take form early in 1966, Teng Hsiao-p'ing was singled out as a prime target of Red Guard criticism. In 1968 the Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] officially termed him "the other biggest head taking the capitalist road." Like Liu Shao-ch'i, designated as the "biggest head" of Chinese revisionism, Teng was downgraded in the party hierarchy, not officially removed from his government and party posts. Little is known about Teng Hsiao-p'ing's private life except that his wife's maiden name was Cho Lin. Teng K'eng T. Chung-yuan ¥? 7C