Deng is by far my favourite Chinese leader in the books I've read — pragmatic where Mao was ideologically lethal. Mao had obvious achievements; he also left awful scars on the health of Chinese society. Deng reads like a welcome antidote to that kind of radical certainty.
I loved the France chapters. Teenage Deng in Marseilles, factory work, Zhou Enlai in the same cramped world — I studied in France myself, so that thread pulled me in. His borrowed line about the cat — black or white, what matters is whether it catches mice — still feels like a perfect rebuke to a lot of the rigid, symbolic politics that has consumed parts of the West lately. Pragmatism over performance.
Vogel's brick of a book is exhausting in the middle but fair on the hard bits, including 1989. I closed it feeling I understood the country I live in a little better.