When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, the tallest building in China was the 18-floor Beijing Hotel. Today the Jingguang building soars to 53 storeys and by 2008 will be eclipsed by the 330-metre China World Trade Centre.

China might still be low-rise but for Deng’s determination to open the country after decades of isolation, and to try to end grinding poverty by forcing through market-style economic reforms.

But despite his role in reshaping the nation, the memorials for Deng today, the tenth anniversary of his death, are likely to be as low-key as the man himself.

His daughter reminisces about a father who was restrained, almost taciturn, but who loved to invite his grandchildren into his office to watch Tom and Jerry cartoons after school.

“He spoke little, but smiled a lot,” Deng Rong told The Times in a rare interview. “Whenever he saw his grandchildren he smiled so much that his eyes crinkled up with delight.”

Memorials were anathema to a man who, before his death at 92, had seen at first hand the damage wrought by Chairman Mao’s cult of personality. He told his family they might as well flush his ashes down the lavatory. Instead, they were scattered at sea to frustrate plans to use his name as a rallying point.

Ms Deng, 56, the fourth of Deng’s five children, believes that his toughest task was to convince his left-leaning revolutionary colleagues that it was time for China to change.

She said: “He liberated their ideas. This was fundamental. In the past, China was closed and walked with bound feet. It couldn’t accept the market. Nowadays we think that this was easy, but then it was really difficult.”

Nicknamed the Rubber Ball for bouncing back to power from three political purges, Deng was above all a pragmatist. Mao branded him the “No 2 Capitalist Roader” during the ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 when he was banished to a remote part of Jiangxi province to work in a tractor factory. But Mao may have been right.

Deng described his policy as “socialism with Chinese characteristics” — effectively a euphemism for capitalism Chinese-style. A decade ago, obituaries described a leader who changed the face of China. Today, his daring decision to transform his country from a Soviet-style command economy is reshaping the world.

David Zweig, a China expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said: “Here is a guy who opened up the country and put it on course to where it will be one of the two world powers of the 21st century. That’s an incredibly strong legacy. He was a gutsy guy.”

He understood that his decision to send in troops to crush the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square demonstrations would lead to international opprobrium, but calculated that the world would be back.

Mr Zweig said: “He may not have made the best choice always, but he made the choices that helped to turn China into the power it is today.”

Ms Deng sees her father as more of an architect than a policymaker.

But he described himself as an optimist. He was never averse to a glass of strong grain liquor at lunch — it helped him to nap — and he retained a love of croissants and French red wine acquired when he studied and worked near Paris in his late teens.

His daughter says that his most difficult task was to overhaul the system of lifelong tenure for the elite. “He ended power-for-life for leaders, replacing government by man with government by law. I’m very proud to say that my father was the first leader in Chinese history who retired while he was still in power.”

Long road to riches

Now

Population in cities: 550 million

Gross domestic product: $10 trillion

Oil consumption: 6.5 million barrels a day

Exports: $954 billion

Population below the poverty line: 130 million

Ten years ago

Population in cities: 370 million

Gross domestic product: $4 trillion

Oil consumption: 3.9 million barrels a day

Exports: $182 billion

Population below the poverty line: 120 million

Sources: CIA, World Bank, Earth Policy Institute, news agencies

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