He was one of the major military leaders of China during the Chinese Civil War along with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Peng Dehuai and Lin Biao.

Deng Zihui also had a close relationship to Mao Zedong on issues related to agricultural reforms, however he was purged from all positions due to the Cultural Revolution.

Deng became a strong defender of peasant property rights, he started opposing the radical policies of forced agricultural collectivization pursued by Mao, especially after the Great Leap Forward.

[8] He relied on extensive investigations into the rural economy to support legal protection of peasant property rights while advocating against policies involving extreme egalitarianism, by opposing policies such as excessive government grain requisitions, state monopoly of agricultural pricing and the frequent and rapid transfer of property ownership.

[8] Deng's proposals inaugurated major agricultural reforms, such as the 'household contract system' (包产到户, baochan daohu) concerning the country's food crisis.

[8] In this system, Deng found an efficient means of resolving the recurrent difficulties that were being faced in the management of collective work.

[4] The system was supported by the chief members of the politburo, such as Tian Jiaying, Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping, however, when it was proposed to Mao Zedong, he refused to consider it because he believed that it pointed to the direction of capitalism.

[4] Deng now felt that he was being directly targeted and, on the 10th of August, he tried to defend himself against attacks by Li Jingquan, Chen Boda and Ke Qingshi.

Additionally, in one harsh handwritten note, Mao recalled some supposed 'serious and historic errors' committed by Deng at the beginning of the 1950s.

[4] Shortly after, the Rural Work Department which Deng was in charge of, was accused by Mao of 'having done nothing useful for the past ten years' and dissolved.

[10] Because of his efforts to resist hasty collectivization and his pioneering advocacy of the responsibility system, Deng became a 'hero before his time' in recent historical reconstructions.

Cao, who was pregnant at the time, was forced to hide in Tibet where she gave birth to the couple's daughter, Deng Fangmei.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, she secretly returned to China with his son and daughter, however she was caught by the local security chief and was arrested along with her parents.

In the autumn of 1934, the Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet was in a state of emergency and the Chinese Red Army was coming close to the historic Long March.

Three days after the birth of their eldest child, Deng Huaisheng, they were forced to send him to a farmer's home in Huichang along with the son of Lin Boqu, due to the consequences of the civil war.

She joined the communist guerillas under the command of Deng Zihui after the Kuomintang killed her family in late 1934 where she served as a mimeographer, intelligence agent, needlewoman, sentry and cook.