Ling-Chi Wang is the former head of ethnic studies and a specialist in Asian American history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Deng Xiaoping ranks with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai as one of the three foremost political giants of 20th century China. Mao liberated China from Western imperialism. Zhou laid the foundation for China's relations with the rest of the world. Deng succeeded in doing what all previous leaders in China failed to do: transform and modernize China's economy in the shortest time and for the benefit of the largest number of people in human history. Within just two decades, some 300 to 400 million peasants and workers were lifted out of chronic poverty.

By contrast, the U.S. and Japan achieved their modernization over many more years and through territorial expansion and exploitation of other people's resources. The four small tigers of East Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) succeeded with economic and military aids from and market access to the U.S. during the Cold War period. Deng's success in providing the most fundamental human rights -- the right to have food and shelter -- in a backward and underdeveloped country of 1.2 billion people guarantees him a well deserved place in world history.

Like President Richard Nixon, Deng was a master political survivalist and strategist who fell in disgrace three times and nonetheless staged successive comebacks. Also like many great world leaders, his accomplishments are tainted by his decision to use excessive force to crush the Tiananmen protest in 1989. That tragic mistake has since become costly to China's relations with the U.S. -- far more costly than Boris Yelstin's bombing of the Russian parliament or his leveling of Chechnya which claimed the lives of upwards of 60,000 people.

In the wake of Deng's death, U.S. politicians and media are claiming that China is now more inscrutible than ever. But viewed in an historical context, China is lifting itself from poverty and backwardness and transforming itself into a global power committed to maintaining prosperity and peace in Asia and throughout the world. Instead of demonizing and scolding China, which China does not deserve and will only ignore, the U.S. should treat and work with China as an equal partner in a joint venture to make the world more peaceful, equal and just.