Ezra Vogel Talk on Deng Xiaoping: The Man Who Transformed China
Harvard University professor emeritus and author gives free talk Tuesday, Nov. 1
TACOMA, Wash. – Distinguished Asia scholar Ezra Vogel will give a public talk next month on Deng Xiaoping, the pragmatic revolutionary responsible for China’s dramatic modernization drive in the late twentieth century. Deng, who was behind the bloody 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, will be revealed for his other, less well-known, leadership role—as the man who probably did more than any other to nurture China’s economic juggernaut and to open its doors to the West.
Vogel, professor emeritus at Harvard University, will present his lecture, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 4–5 p.m. in Trimble Forum, Trimble Hall on the campus of University of Puget Sound. Admission is free and light refreshments will be served. The talk is hosted by the Asian Studies program
A well-travelled researcher of Japan, Korea, and China, Vogel has written many books that trace the political and social transformations in East Asia over more than five decades. His book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979) became a top seller in Japan and was followed two decades later by Is Japan Still Number One? This spring saw the launch of The Park Chung Hee Era, a potent account of Korea’s rapid growth following the Korean War, co-authored by Vogel and 22 other scholars.
Vogel’s book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, September 2011) portrays the life of a young man who joined the Chinese Revolution in 1927 and for 50 years loyally served the cause led by dictator Mao Zedong. Once at the top himself, from 1978 to 1989, Deng unraveled much of the economic system he had helped to build.
Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet his fist struck like steel when he was faced with the young dissidents who gathered in Tiananmen Square in April 1989.
In his book Vogel observes the culture of corruption that flourished within Chinese society under Deng. Yet the private and serious authoritarian also fostered meritocratic leadership and created an economy that has grown for three decades at a stunning 10 percent per year. Copies of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China will be available at the lecture.
Ezra F. Vogel is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Harvard University and former director of Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the Asia Center. He earlier served for two years as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington, D.C., and in 1998 he directed the Joint Chinese-American Assembly between China and the United States. Vogel has received numerous honorary degrees, as well as a Japan Foundation Special Award in 1996 and The Japan Society Award in 1998. He has lectured frequently in Asia, in both Chinese and Japanese.
