The Southern Tour: Deng Xiaoping and the Opening of Modern China

A History Today Book of the Year 2024

On a freezing January afternoon in 1992, Deng Xiaoping, China’s former paramount leader and now a revered elder statesman, set off on a month long trip around China’s south in defence of the reforms he had set in motion to open up China’s economy and transform the country into the political and economic powerhouse we know today.

In this book Jonathan Chatwin pursues the story of Deng’s legendary ＂Southern Tour＂ and examines its legacies in the country today. Chatwin recounts the crucial debates and disagreements that characterised Chinese politics in the aftermath of the brutal crackdown of the Tiananmen protests of 1989, and the decisive influence of Deng’s journey in establishing an economic blueprint for the 1990s and beyond. He explores a nation which has been transformed by large-scale urbanisation - exemplified by the mega-cities of southern China that Deng visited and endorsed - but whose leadership is now conflicted by the pursuit of wealth that Deng legitimized. Drawing on historical and contemporary eyewitness accounts, and the author’s own 3000 mile journey in Deng’s footsteps, The Southern Tour brings to life the story of China’s transformation into a 21st-century superpower.

Jonathan Chatwin is a writer and journalist, and author of Long Peace Street: A walk in modern China, which fuses travel and history to tell the story of modern China. His essays and articles have been published by CNN, the South China Morning Post, the British Film Institute, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Caixin amongst other publications. Jonathan is also the author of Anywhere Out of the World, a study of the work of traveller and
writer Bruce Chatwin, which drew on extensive archival research. He holds a PhD in English Literature.