The Nine Days That Deng Xiao-Ping Visited USA in 1979 - Hanson Chan - Bog

Deng Xiao-ping (or also known as "Teng Hsiao-ping" in earlier version of translation) visited the United States as Vice-Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, from January 28 to February 5, 1979, nine days in all, marking a major event in the history of Sino-U.S. relations. This visit was in the wake of the thaw achieved between China and the United States, by Mao Ze-dong and Zhou En-lai in the early 1970s, with a vision of inaugurating China's future international influence and paving the way for China's gradual reform and opening up to the western world, alongside the implementation of its modernization program. At that time, Hanson Chan worked with China Daily News in New York as deputy editor-in-chief and also in charge of news reporting when Deng Xiao-ping visited the United States, so he was naturally assigned and duty-bound to cover the entire event. There was something very special regarding his reporting besides just being a news reporter, as he mentioned in the "Forward" of this book: "Most notably, during my reporting in Atlanta, I met a senior adviser of the Chinese delegation by chance at the shopping area within the big hotel they stayed..".; he then said that after a short chat and in addition to both exchanged names, he boldly made a suggestion by pointing out that the four cities being selected and arranged for Vice-Premier Deng to visit did not include New York and San Francisco -- which happened to be the two places with the largest number of Chinese Americans and overseas Chinese among all Chinatown settlements in USA; therefore, he wondered, would they consider paying tribute to and encouraging the majority of overseas Chinese in America in the form of writing an inscription (by Vice-Premier Deng) and let it be published through the newspaper he worked with? As a result, he was really overjoyed to receive Deng Xiao-ping's historic handwritten inscription on a piece of white paper at the Seattle airport on February 5, shortly before the Vice-Premier ended his visit. And the inscription reads: "May you make greater efforts to enhance the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples. May you make more contributions to the socialist construction of the motherland, and to the great cause of reunification of the motherland, with Taiwan returned to the motherland. -- Deng Xiao-ping." Having learned what happened, a reporter from Xinhua News Agency accompanying with the delegation immediately issued the news of that particular event, which "I took back to my newspaper along with Deng's inscription. Both were published on the front page on February 7, 1979." Then, 30 years later, in early October 2010, Hanson Chan met with Vice-President Mr. Yao Lishi of Xinhua Publishing House in Beijing, and was encouraged to write a book detailing all the activities in the itinerary of Deng Xiao-ping's nine-day visit to the United States, and to include and describe as vividly as possible the wider and the little-known insider stories throughout the entire trip. He accepted the challenge. This was how the contents of this book which in Chinese originally entitled "The Nine Days That Deng Xiao-ping Visited the United States" was initially first written in Chinese and published in the mainland China, and for the following five years, it strictly circulated within the mainland of China alone, from 2011 to 2016. Now, for this newly revised and republished Simplified Chinese edition, it is available in USA and for readers who live beyond.