In a country where anniversaries are road markings in a winding narrative aimed at ensuring stability and the continuity of Communist Party rule, the 20th anniversary of the death of former leader Deng Xiaoping passed in February with surprisingly little fuss.

Deng, who died in 2007 at 92, kicked off China’s economic modernisation in the late 1970s after the death of Mao Zedong. As China’s pre-eminent leader from 1978 to 1989, and again in 1992, he was the “chief architect” of the country’s economic reform.

Deng is probably best known in the West for his observation “to get rich is glorious”. While some historians dispute whether he actually ever said this, the advice was followed by millions of Chinese people.

Remembered for his quotability, Deng’s phrases, real or apocryphal, have become part of the ideological landscape. The seeds of China’s metamorphosis were planted in 1978, when Deng declared: “We must learn to manage the economy by economic means.”

As to whether China should stick rigidly to Marxist theory or open up to capitalist ideas, Deng simply said: “It does not matter whether the cat is black or white; as long as it catches the mouse, it is a good cat.”

During the era of Hu Jintao, predecessor to current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Deng was frequently lionised and he did much to unravel the cult of personality that had built up around Mao, the so-called Great Helmsman.

When you travel in southern China, you can still see billboards marking Deng’s visit in 1992 to the southern enclave of Shenzhen, now a start-up hub and a sophisticated manufacturing centre. Deng believed this city, that borders Hong Kong, would provide a template for a broader modernisation of China, and he was right.

Impoverished monolith

This part of the narrative, the pragmatic, disciplined force that put ideology aside to transform China from a provincial, blinkered and impoverished monolith into a modern, globalised nation that is the world’s second biggest economy, is the story that the Communist Party has told for many years.

Mao called Deng “a needle inside a ball of cotton” and during the Cultural Revolution, the period of ideological frenzy 40 years ago that was the greatest power play the People’s Republic has ever seen, Deng suffered.

With Deng viewed with suspicion as a “capitalist roader”, his son Deng Pufang was thrown from a window by Red Guards and never walked again.

What a political survivor he was. Ezra Vogel points out in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China how Deng endured accusations, purges and exile before becoming leader.

Some of the comments posted online to mark the anniversary show how fondly he is remembered. “I think Deng’s life is so legendary. He is remembered for his economic policy, but I remember and am particularly moved by his words ‘I am the son of the Chinese people, I love my motherland and the people’ and how he lived his life by his principles,” wrote one admirer.

Despite this, none of the big outlets – the official Xinhua news agency, China Central Television and the People’s Daily, which is the official organ of the Communist Party – ran any long, laudatory articles commemorating the anniversary. The People’s Daily website ran a small inside page piece.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of adulation is that Xi, the president, is about to start his second five years at the helm of the country, and this year’s National People’s Congress, plus another five-year gathering later this year, are aimed at emphasising his grip on power.

‘Maoist utopia’

Deng’s is a most complicated legacy, Alexander Pantsov and Steven Levine write in Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life, remarking on how “after following a long and winding path of reconsidering his basic beliefs, he not only broke free from the clutches of Maoist socioeconomic utopia himself but also helped his people see clearly”.

Deng also oversaw the crackdown on pro-democracy students who protested on Tiananmen Square in 1989. He “restored order” in the name of maintaining stability, but hundreds or more died and the pace of China’s opening up was slowed.

“In the final analysis, he did not trust the Chinese people in whose name he and his comrades professed to rule,” Pantsov and Levine write.

Others remember him for his chain smoking and his spitting habit – he famously kept a spittoon beside him even during high-level political meetings, including the meeting with Margaret Thatcher to decide the future of Hong Kong. At one point, after Thatcher made a speech, he spat loudly into the receptacle, a moment read as emblematic by China-watchers since. The world watched as the cat went on to catch the mouse with ease.