Xiaoping Quotes & Sayings

Young leading cadres have risen up by helicopter. They should really rise step by step. — Deng Xiaoping

Instead, Deng Xiaoping and his allies, who were no less self-interested than their rivals but who had different interests and political objectives, defeated their powerful opponents in the Communist Party and masterminded a political revolution of sorts, radically changing the leadership and direction of the party. — Anonymous

There is oil in the Middle East there is rare earth in China. — Deng Xiaoping

Keep a cool head and maintain a low profile. Never take the lead - but aim to do something big. — Deng Xiaoping

We must firmly grasp management. Just making things isn't enough. We need to raise the quality. — Deng Xiaoping

We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries ( ... ) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems ( ... ) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible ( ... ) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations. — Deng Xiaoping

Mao asks Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, "How do you get a cat to bite a hot pepper?" Zhou says, "You hold him down, pry his jaws open, and shove the pepper into his mouth." Mao says, "No, that's force. We want the cat to bite the pepper of his own free will." Deng says, "You take the pepper, wrap it in a delicious piece of fish, and, before he knows it, the cat has bitten the pepper." Mao says, "No, that's trickery. We want the cat to know he's biting the pepper." Zhou and Deng say, "We give up. How do you make a cat bite a hot pepper?" "It's easy," Mao says. "Stick the pepper up the cat's ass. He'll be glad to bite it. — P. J. O'Rourke

I knew Deng Xiaoping when he came out of prison. He had, after all, been imprisoned for nearly ten years by Mao. I know what China looked like before he took over, and so in my own mind, I don't think of Deng Xiaoping as an oppressor. I think of somebody who, faced with that crisis, made a very painful and decision with which I cannot agree. But I also think of him as a great reformer. — Henry A. Kissinger

Reform is China's second revolution. — Deng Xiaoping

Cross the river by feeling for stones. — Deng Xiaoping

Let some people get rich first. — Deng Xiaoping

Do not debate! is one of my inventions. — Deng Xiaoping

It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice. — Deng Xiaoping

Even if they're functioning out of ignorance, they are still participating and must be suppressed. In China, even one million people can be considered a small sum. — Deng Xiaoping

Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership. — Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping thought of himself as a great revolutionary and a great reformer. He had dismantled the Chinese communist management of the economy. In my next-to-last conversation with him, which was about six months before Tiananmen Square, he said to me that his aim would be the next phase to reduce the Communist Party to philosophical issues. And I said, "What's a philosophical issue?" And he said, "Well, like if we make an alliance with Russia." Given his view of Russia, that was not the likeliest thing that would ever happen. — Henry A. Kissinger

Deng Xiaoping made a calculation. He bet on demographics. What he knew was that China had this enormous population of young, underemployed people, people who he could move from the farms to the coast and put them to work in factories, and that would be the lifeblood of China's economy. — Evan Osnos

No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat. — Deng Xiaoping

If there is one leader to whom most Chinese people express gratitude for improvements in their daily lives, it is Deng Xiaoping. Did any other leader in the twentieth century do more to improve the lives of so many? Did any other twentieth-century leader have such a large and lasting influence on world history? — Ezra F. Vogel

He [Deng Xiaoping] said that he did not understand why we failed to grasp that the alternative was not democracy, but total chaos and risking all the reforms that had been achieved. — Henry A. Kissinger

The fateful moment for the Chinese economy, crippled by central planning and collectivized production, was when Deng Xiaoping, China's long-term leader after Mao's death, announced that the country would pursue "Socialism with Chinese characteristics," which is to say a market economy under an authoritarian technocracy. This was in 1977, as good a year as any for marking the birth of modern China. Deng and his associates undertook a job akin to that of a political bomb squad, laboriously dismantling most of the economic ideology installed by Mao without blowing up political continuity at the same time. That they succeeded is in many ways the single most important political fact of contemporary China. — Clay Shirky

When our thousands of Chinese students abroad return home, you will see how China will transform itself. — Deng Xiaoping

He took over, and he said: 'If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it.'" - Recalling how former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping dealt with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests — Lee Kuan Yew

A fundamental contradiction does not exist between socialism and a market economy. — Deng Xiaoping

To get rich is glorious. — Deng Xiaoping

Until the Nineteen-Eighties, when Deng Xiaoping designated the area as China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen had been a tiny fishing village. Suddenly, eleven million people appeared, seemingly out of nowhere; factories sprang up, often housed in hastily constructed tower blocks. — Michael Specter

The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves. — Deng Xiaoping

I don't care if the cat is black or white, I just want it to kill the mice. — Deng Xiaoping

[There is a] gulf that can exist between different emotional and perceptual worlds - all 'Chinese' - in recent times [post-Deng Xiaoping]. — Mark Elvin

If the masses feel some anger, we must let them express it. — Deng Xiaoping

Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious. — Deng Xiaoping

Comrade Deng Xiaoping - along with other party elders - gave the party leadership their firm and full support to put down the political disturbance using forceful measures. — Li Peng

By following the concept of one country, two systems, you dont swallow me up nor I you. — Deng Xiaoping

As Deng Xiaoping once said, "I don't care if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." The Stoics had their own reminder: "Don't go expecting Plato's Republic." Because — Ryan Holiday

Since China embraced Deng Xiaoping's reforms on 22 December 1978, China has experimented with different exchange-rate regimes. Until 1994, the yuan was in an ever-depreciating phase against the U.S. dollar. — Steve Hanke

Be reasonable with the students and make sure they see the logic in what we're doing. — Deng Xiaoping

China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one ... If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it. — Deng Xiaoping

Seek truth from facts. — Deng Xiaoping

I had come to expect that Chinese friends would make financial decisions that I found uncomfortably risky: launching businesses with their savings, moving across the country without the assurance of a job. One explanation, which Weber and Hsee call "the cushion hypothesis," is that traditionally large Chinese family networks afford people confidence that they can turn to others for help if their risk-taking does not succeed. Another theory is more specific to the boom years. "The economic reforms undertaken by Deng Xiaoping were a gamble in themselves," Ricardo Siu, a business professor at the University of Macau, told me. "So people got the idea that taking a risk is not just okay; it has utility." For those who have come from poverty to the middle class, he added, "the thinking may be, If I lose half my money, well, I've lived through that. I won't be poor again. And in several years I can earn it back. But if I win? I'm a millionaire! — Evan Osnos

One especially prominent time loop lashes together two of the city's most celebrated high-rises -- the Park Hotel and the Jin Mao Tower -- binding the Puxi of Old Shanghai with the Pudong New Area. Each was the tallest Shanghai building of its age (judged by highest occupied floor), the Park Hotel for five decades, the Jin Mao Tower for just nine years. This discrepancy masks a deeper time-symmetry in the completion dates of the two buildings: the Park Hotel seven years prior to the closing of the city (with the Japanese occupation of the International Settlement in 1941), the Jin Mao Tower seven years after the city's formal re-opening (as the culmination of Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour, in 1992). — Nick Land

The minority yields to the majority! — Deng Xiaoping