Liberal trade, investment, financial aid and technology (including military assets and know-how) all flowed freely into Beijing’s coffers. The support came not only from Western governments and companies, but also from the international financial institutions they funded and controlled.

In what President Nixon called ‘a strategic gamble’ when he decided to open relations with China, the developed world was betting that full, open-handed, and deep-pocketed engagement with China would not only reform its economic system, eventually profiting both sides, but would also lead eventually to political opening within China. Here too Professor Vogel does not do justice to the broader dimension of Deng’s historic role: having given him too much credit for single-handedly rescuing China’s economy, he accords him too little blame for his failure of political vision.

Deng’s charm encouraged Western leaders to believe that political reform was also his own eventual goal, after economic liberalisation was firmly established. This development formula worked for South Korea and Taiwan and it seemed more suited to China than the dramatic, though largely non-violent, upheavals in Eastern Europe.

After all, as Professor Vogel informs us: ‘Deng believed that how much a country moved toward democracy depended on how stable the political situation was’. And, without the turmoil of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, he did introduce somewhat greater freedom than had existed under Mao.

What Deng meant by a ‘stable political situation,’ however, was not simply stability within Chinese society (that is, the absence of civil conflict and public violence). Deng was concerned more with the preservation of Communist Party power. His service as a military commander in China’s civil war, Vogel tells us, had been as a political commissar.

The real test of Deng’s loyalties — to the people of China, the stability of society or the entrenched dictatorship of the Communist Party — came with the peaceful student protests of 1989. They were precipitated by the death of Hu Yaobang, who supported both economic and political liberalisation, and had been criticised by Party and military hardliners for not decisively cracking down on student demonstrations in 1986.

The non-violent student protests that took place in 1989 targeted official corruption and secret rule by senior Party members, restrictions on the media, inflation in the economy and conditions within the universities. But the students’ dignified and peaceful conduct, and the persuasiveness of their demands soon attracted the support and participation of ordinary workers and professionals in Beijing and several hundred other cities.

This was an incredible turning-point in China’s 5000-year history: Chinese society had now truly ‘stood up’, as Mao had proclaimed 40 years earlier, and communicated — not with guns and violence but with earnest, peaceful entreaties — the direction in which they wanted their government to take them.

Amplifying the historic moment, the eyes of the world were upon China as Soviet President Mikhael Gorbachev — of glasnost and perestroika fame — was visiting Beijing during a meeting of the Asian Development Bank.

And Deng was the perfect agent of historic change. He bore the battle scars of two Communist Party purges and of the bureaucratic struggles with the Party’s conservatives, who opposed Deng’s economic liberalisation until he had been proved right. As paramount leader at the top of the Party and government apparatus — with worldwide respect and acclaim for what he had already achieved for China, and with the peaceful multitudes of Chinese society ready to follow his leadership — Deng could have pushed China over the finish line to political reform. Instead, he reverted to communist dictatorial form. As Vogel matter-of-factly puts it: ‘When public demonstrations interfered with the movement of people in the centre of Beijing he sent in unarmed troops. When this failed to bring order he told his troops to do what was necessary to maintain peace. Several hundred people were killed on 4 June 1989 in his effort to maintain stability’.

What a sad and inaccurate account of what happened! The demonstrations hardly ‘interfered with the movement of people’ — it was the people themselves who voluntarily gathered to speak to their government. There was nothing the troops needed to do ‘to maintain peace or stability’ — the situation was quite stable and peaceful throughout the demonstration; the people gave flowers and food to the police and army.

But there was a symbol at the protests that really rankled the hardliners, who, it turned out, included Deng: the papier-mâché figure of the ‘Goddess of Democracy’ — resembling far too closely America’s Statue of Liberty.

Perhaps no leader in human history has held a nation’s destiny so firmly in his grasp as did Deng Xiaoping in June of 1989. He deserves the praise of Vogel and others for the changes he did accomplish, but this must be placed in the context of the far greater gains he could have achieved for Chinese society, were his imagination not constrained by the stifling political ideology he ultimately shared.

Joseph A Bosco is a US national security consultant, who before retirement in 2010, served in the office of the US Secretary of Defense and taught at Georgetown University.