“The eyes of Texas were on Deng Xiaoping today.” Pause it right there. Now look inside that
carriage. Zoom it in.
That man inside is Deng Xiaoping. Now I actually did a poll before I
made this video to see what the name recognition was there. And
about two thirds of you didn't know who he was and that's, that's fine.
Deng Xiaoping was China's leader from 1978 to 1992. And this rodeo was actually kind
of key to understanding his gigantic influence. In fact,
you know what? Let's cut the country music. This video's a little too serious for that.
Deng changed his country. He set the groundwork for the global economy of
the 21st century and was arguably one of the most influential figures of the 20th
century. And here he is wearing a cowboy hat. “The United States of America and the People’s
Republic of China.” “During the rodeo,
Deng will be given a cowboy hat.” “Waving his new Stetson hat,
then aboard the old stagecoach.”, “The vice premier of China.”
“It is hard to beat the Texas rodeo.”
So I love the local coverage of this. Uh,
because I'd argue, this is kind of an inflection point for the 21st century. And yet watch this:
“As rodeos go. This is not one of your biggies it's usually put on for convention delegates
from Houston. They need something to do at night. There’s something colorful with the local flavor.”
This guy is just annoyed that the rodeo is not a good rodeo.
“But most of the Chinese visitors here tonight don't know a good rodeo from a bad one. So it
doesn't make much difference. About 2000 people are here including around seven hundred reporters
and photographers.” He's so annoyed that
they're not seeing a good rodeo. Okay. So what is going on here? Why
did Deng Xiaoping go to this rodeo? The straightforward answer is that in 1979,
Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese delegation visited the United States to celebrate “the normalization
of diplomatic relations to strengthen and to expedite the benefits of this new relationship
between China and the United States. I am pleased to announce that vice pres….vice premier Deng
has accepted my invitation and will visit Washington at the end of January.”
So this is basically a, Hey we're friends now tour! Where China is like,
yeah, we totally go to rodeos with America. And this is what friends do. This is a little like
what Nixon was doing when he visited China a few years prior though, now relations are normalized.
They recognize each other. It is official. So Deng tours. He goes to the Kennedy center
to see John Denver and the Joffrey ballet, including a dance to Rodeo by Aaron Copeland.
That's this one. (The song plays.)
They continue on to Texas on the normalizing tour and a Texan Democrat bigwig has a really
crazy idea. He decides that he's gonna take him to an authentic Texan rodeo in the Houston area.
And that is just what they do. They drink beers. They hang out,
Deng gets a cowboy hat of his own to wear. And they also give him not one, “but two,
$10,000 bulls” which is useful. “We have, uh, good relaxation,
good barbecue, good country music. And, uh, good rodeo show.” I know this is a PR guy,
but he seems genuinely very happy. (Laughter of pure joy.)
Then they leave Texas to continue their tour and eventually go back home.
It seems like a cool state visit. And that is why the context is necessary
to see what really happened when China went to the rodeo.
“Every Saturday night, there's a rodeo at the Roundup arena in Simonton. But
they're having a special one Friday at the request of the State Department.”
And I'm showing you this because I think there's nothing funnier
than people not caring at all about world historical events.
“What will you be doing tomorrow night when he's here?”
“I’m gonna be watching a movie on TV, I imagine.” So this event is definitely important to the
history of the United States, which is why I mentioned Nixon.
Um, and it's important to Taiwan as well. One of the big controversies at the time was the fact
that China wanted to take over Taiwan. And the US was kind of saying, okay, that's, we'll do that.
“The government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is,
but one China. And Taiwan is part of China.”
American interests were also served by the normalization of relations with China,
including in their long cold war chess game against the USSR. But I would argue that
the biggest story here relates to China and China's role. In the global economy.
“Now, suddenly we have a new set of east west relationships.”
You gotta remember that, at this time, China was not the global superpower that it is today.
It was still a developing nation. Here's a timeline with a 30,000 foot view of things.
Here's Mao: communism at a brutal point with the cultural revolution,
making really harsh choices for the Chinese. Then Deng gets power from the party of elites.
He initiates a ton of different reforms that set up the China we know today, the kind of hyper
capitalist authoritarian, China. It's also the birth of the capitalism that brings hundreds of
millions of Chinese people out of poverty. That's because a big component of Dunn's
mini-reforms is opening up China to the rest of the world, especially economically.
But how do you actually do that? You have to sell yourself to the world and in this
coverage of the rodeo, you see Deng doing just that. I particularly love this clip of
an Austin communist who thinks that Deng has betrayed them through capitalism.
“It's time that, that, uh, revolutionaries stood up and expose these traders like Deng Xiaoping.”
It wasn't just college communists who realized the implications of Deng's trip though.
This article shows how Vietnam was mad and that the “cowboy” had showed his
“real nature.” You can also see the dynamic in this New York Times spread. I love this
page in particular because it really shows the dynamics at play on the top left here.
You've got “Americans provide many reasons for partiality to China over
Soviet” over here. You've got a change in Chinese spelling,
which happened for a lot of reasons, but I like to think of it as basically the West
is starting to take China seriously. And so they're spelling things a little differently.
That's why I spelled Deng Xiaoping this way instead of this way in this video. Then, here,
you see the human interest coverage of Deng’s trip. And here, right here at the bottom,
the main story, the one that is on the front page is about the economic stuff that's going
on here. He wants billions of dollars to start flowing between the two countries.
This tour was a way for him to tell American business interests that
he is not just a communist, he’s a cowboy, just like them.
“And everywhere Deng went, their were crowds.. But Doug seem more
interested in the equipment than in the swarms of people around him.”
But this clip right here, this is the mission that he is on. He's trying to get money flowing
from the United States to China and eventually vice versa. And you know, it's all about money.
So what to make of all this?
There are a lot of political opinions about this, on that poll that I did. You can kind
of see the range of opinions that people have about this. And I, I think kind of
everybody has a point. I encourage you to debate those things in the comments,
but I wanna present something that I think we can agree on,
even without the nuance to get into the politics of China and America, and that is this trip.
In this rodeo are concrete moments in a really
gooey narrative that is vaguely called “the rise of China.”
It is so rare that we get to see tangible scenes from these big movements in history. But I would
argue that that is definitely what this is: a tour of the United States where a vice premier
hustled for his developing country's survival. He had a big goal to change the fate of China.
And because of that goal, he went to Texas and he went to the rodeo.
All right. Um, if you have not been here before, this is a personal and
history channel where I post videos. On the aforementioned personal and history topics. Uh,
thank you so much for answering that poll in the community tab.
Um, it's pretty awesome to get so many responses and kind of change the headline of this video.
So I knew that Deng Xiaoping wouldn't be getting the clicks that, uh, China would. So, yeah,
appreciate that. Um, and yeah, I'd love to know in the comments, if you're interested in these
sort of topics. Um, I also kind of wanna make videos about each of the reforms that Deng did,
cuz they're all really interesting and really impactful. So let me know if that would be of
interest or any other topics and uh, yeah. Thank you for watching and I will see you
in the next one. All right, bye.