Death Of Deng Xiaoping

The Prime Minister, Rt Hon Jim Bolger, today described former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping as an architect of modern China. He extended New Zealands sympathy to the Chinese people on the death of a leader who had been at the centre of Chinese politics for more than half a century.

Mr Bolger said that Deng, whose death was announced today, would be remembered first of all for the role he had played in Chinas economic reform process. He spearheaded Chinas opening to the outside world, and the market-oriented policies that have since 1978 delivered China a year-on-year growth rate of over 9 percent.

New Zealand has benefited from the success and stability of those policies, Mr Bolger said. And the whole world is better off because China is engaged internationally, and set to continue along that path. We have Deng to thank for that.

The Prime Minister recalled that Deng Xiaoping had had an unusually chequered political career. A leading figure in the party hierarchy from the early years of government, he was twice purged in the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, but emerged as Chinas paramount leader in 1978, and effectively occupied that position up to the time of his death.

Deng had a focussed approach to the development of modern China, giving priority to social stability in the face of domestic and international calls for improved human rights and a more participatory government. Deng measured the success of his policies by their effect on the material well-being of the Chinese people. To have achieved the advances he did, in a country of 1.2 billion people, is a remarkable feat by anyones standards. Deng has laid a solid platform for the succeeding generation of Chinese leadership to build upon.

In paying tribute to the paramount contribution Deng Xiaoping had made to Chinas development and its opening to the outside world, Mr Bolger expressed the deep sympathy of the New Zealand Government and people to the government and people of the Peoples Republic of China in the loss of a pre-eminent statesman and leader.