The "cultural revolution", initiated and led by Mao Zedong, took China down the wrong path. Taking advantage if the situation, a group of careerists and conspirators headed by Lin Biao and another by Jiang Qing attempted to usurp the Party and state leadership, bringing unprecedented disaster upon the Party and the people. During the ten years of turmoil Deng Xiaoping was twice discredited and removed from office and went through the most painful ordeal in his revolutionary career.

No sooner had the "cultural revolution" been launched than Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping became its chief targets. In August 1966, at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, when Mao Zedong issued his famous call to "bombard the headquarters", Liu and eng were wrongly criticized and repudiated. Deng was labeled the "No.2 Capitalist Roader in China" and his family members were implicated. His eldest son Deng Pufang, then a student of physics at Beijing University, was persecuted with such violence that he received permanent injuries which left him confined to a wheelchair.

In October 1969, when Lin Biao, in and attempt to seize party and state leadership, issued his "No.1 order" to prepare against war, Deng Xiaoping was sent under escort to Xinjian County, Jiangxi Province. Having already been dismissed from all his posts, he was taken to do manual labor at the county's tractor repairing plant every morning. He worked as a fitter, as he had learned to do in France in his youth, and found himself as proficient at the job as before. Living with him were his wife Zhuo Lin, who was often ill, and his aged stepmother Xia Bogen, the three of them having only one another to depend on. It was Deng Xiaoping who, at the age of 65, took care of cleaning the room, chopping the wood and breaking up the coal. When Deng Pufang became paralyzed and needed help, after repeated requests by his parents and grandmother he was sent to live with them; then his father took on the additional responsibility of nursing him. During this period Deng Xiaoping made the best use of his spare time, often reading late into the night. He read a great number of Marxist-Leninist works and many other books both Chinese and foreign, ancient and modern. The ordeal in Xinjian lasted for three years.

In September 1971 the collapse of Lin Biao's plot for a counter-revolutionary coup and his death in an air crash eventually led to the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping. In 1972 Mao Zedong began to consider letting Deng resume his work, and the following year, with the support of Zhou Enlai, he was restored to his post as Vice-Premier of the State Council. In 1974 he delivered a speech at the Sixth Special Session of the United nations General Assembly on behalf of the Chinese government, in which he systematically set forth Mao Zedong's thesis of the three worlds. In January 1975, when Premier Zhou Enlai became seriously ill and was hospitalized, Deng Xiaoping was reappointed Vice-Premier and appointed Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the PLA, thus replacing Zhou as the person in charge of all the routine work of the Party and the state.

Jiang Qing had tried to prevent Deng's reinstatement from the outset, but it was in 1975 that the struggle between Deng and the Gang of Four became acute. With all his energy Deng set about restoring order to the chaotic situation caused by the "cultural revolution". "At present," he said. " There are a great many problems which we cannot solve without indomitable will. We must be determined and daring." He called for efforts to bring about stability and unity and to develop the national economy. His conviction that this was that the country needed reflected the interests and aspirations of the whole nation, and to the people's great satisfaction, noticeable results were achieved within a short period of time. Nevertheless, while Mao Zedong supported Deng Xiaoping in his administration of the day-to-day work of the central organs, he could not tolerate Deng's systematic correction of the mistakes arising from the "cultural revolution". He therefore launched a movement to criticized Deng and to counter the "Right deviation of reversing correct verdicts", which plunged the country into turmoil again. Taking advantage of this situation, the Gang of Four stepped in and framed Deng Xiaoping. They accused him of having been the behind-the -scenes instigator of the Tiananmen Incident of April 5, 1976, in which the people had poured out their love for the late Premier Zhou Enlai and their hatred for the Gang of Four, Deng was thus once again dismissed from all his posts inside and outside the Party, and once again dark clouds hung over the entire nation.

(Deng Xiaoping Pictorial)