Jonathan Chatwin reconstructs one of modern China's pivotal moments: Deng Xiaoping's month-long journey through southern China in January 1992. At eighty-seven, the former paramount leader was technically retired, but he remained determined to defend the market reforms he had championed against conservative forces within the Communist Party. The Tiananmen crackdown of 1989 had emboldened those who wanted to roll back economic liberalization, and Deng's 'Southern Tour' was his counterstrike. Chatwin, who retraced Deng's 3,000-mile journey himself, weaves together historical analysis with contemporary observation. He examines the mega-cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou that Deng visited and endorsed, places that would become laboratories for the economic transformation that followed. The book draws on eyewitness accounts from both the original journey and the present day, revealing how the debates of 1992 echo in today's China. Deng's legitimization of wealth-seeking created the economic blueprint that produced a superpower, but it also planted contradictions that the current leadership struggles to resolve. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how China became what it is today, told through the story of an elderly man who refused to let his revolution be undone.