Source: China Central Television, Beijing, in Standard Chinese 1205 gmt 4 Jan 97

Chinese Central Television on 4th January carried the fourth part of the 12-part TV documentary "Deng Xiaoping" .

Titled "The 17 Years", the 45-minute programme, showing archival footage and interviews with Bo Yibo, Song Renqiong, Yin Fatang and other veteran Chinese officials, deals with the following issues:

1) The liberation of Sichuan and southwest China in late 1949 by the PLA Second Field Army led by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Bocheng; and how Deng Xiaoping, as first secretary of the CCP Central Committee Southwest China Bureau, proceeded with his plan to develop southwest China, beginning with the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing Railway.

2) How Deng Xiaoping, on Mao Zedong's order, masterminded the " peaceful liberation of Tibet" in 1952 by rearming the already partly demobilized Second Field Army within six days; and Deng's policy of administering minority areas by granting these areas autonomy and setting up coalition administrations.

3) Deng's departure from Sichuan in 1952 to become vice-premier and finance minister of the central government, and his involvement in the "first inner-party struggle" in 1953 and his "important contributions" to the fight against the "anti-party coalition of Gao Gang and Rao Sushi" , party bosses of the CCP Central Committee's northeast and east China bureaus.

4) Deng's appointment to the office of the CCP Central Committee general secretary in April 1954 at Mao's recommendation.

5) The convocation of the Eighth CCP National Congress in 1956 at which Deng Xiaoping became a member of the CCP Central Committee Political Bureau Standing Committee and the beginning of China's socialist construction programmes.

6) The role Deng played in the Great Leap Forward movement, which gave rise to China's economic debacle and the famine that followed; and Deng's confession to an Italian journalist in 1980 that he was partly to blame for the disaster. Deng says in the interview that the " mistakes were committed out of the intention to do something good" .

7) Deng choosing to side with Marshal Peng Dehuai after Peng was disgraced in the anti-rightist movement following the Great Leap Forward, and the plan Deng later masterminded to rehabilitate millions of cadres victimized during the anti-rightist movement.

8) The respect which Mao Zedong and Krushchev had for Deng. At a Moscow meeting in 1957, Mao said Deng was a "rare talent in the CCP" who upheld principles but acted with flexibility; and Krushchev told Mao that although Deng was short in physique, he was highly intelligent.

9) The development of Deng's famous theory for China's economic recovery and the "cat" phrase he coined for it that is based on a local Sichuan expression.

10) The holding of the 7,000-strong central working conference in January 1962, at which Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi presented a report that summed up the mistakes the CCP had committed during the preceding four years.