Twice named Man of the Year by Time magazine, Deng was undoubtedly a world-class leader in every sense of the word.
Purged three times in his seven-decade-long political career, he played an instrumental role in China's Long March from a war-torn country to a key player in the new economic order.
What set Deng apart from other Third World socialist leaders was that he - like predecessor Mao Zedong - believed China had to build socialism in its own way.
But, unlike Mao, Deng held that economics - not class struggle - should be the ticket to the socialist Utopia.
In kicking off his reforms and open-door policy in 1978, Deng took the Communist Party to the point of no return. And, by tapping into the desperation for change after the Cultural Revolution, he recharted China's direction in the late 1970s and removed Mao from his pedestal.
The modernisation scheme he launched in the late 1970s gave the terrified Chinese people a much-needed glimpse of hope.