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Zhao Ziyang, while under house arrest after 1989, found a way to record in his own words an account of his history and personal views, a work that has been translated into English as Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang,
The average per capita income of Chinese peasants, who made up 80 percent of the population, was then only US$40 per year. The amount of grain produced per person had fallen below what it had been in 1957.
He realized what some free-market economists did not, that one could not solve problems simply by opening markets; one had to build institutions gradually.
President Jimmy Carter commented that Deng, unlike Soviet leaders, had an inner confidence that allowed one to get directly into substantive issues.
At a state banquet in Washington in January 1979, when told by Shirley MacLaine about a Chinese intellectual who was so grateful for what he had learned about life after being sent to the countryside to raise tomatoes during the Cultural Revolution, Deng's patience was soon exhausted. He interrupted her to say, “He was lying” and went on to tell her how horrible the Cultural Revolution
Many Chinese leaders, when seated next to their guest in comfortable chairs that were placed aside each other, would look straight ahead when they talked, but Deng liked to turn and look directly at the person he was talking with.
He was always ready to learn, but in the end he believed he knew better than they what was good for China and it was not capitalism and Western-style democracy.
an instinctive patriotism and commitment to the Communist Party that inspired the confidence of his fellow officials.
From his five years in France and one year in the Soviet Union, Deng acquired a far better understanding of developments around the world and far more perspective on China than Mao had garnered.
At Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University in Moscow where the Soviets were just beginning to train Chinese for the international communist movement, Deng was selected for Group No. 7, in which the highest level of Chinese leaders were trained for the international Communist movement.
