Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese politician and reformist leader of the People's Republic of China who, after Mao Zedong's death, led his country towards a market economy. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (de jure leader of the Communist Party of China), he nonetheless was the "paramount leader" of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1992. Born into a peasant background in Guang'an, Sichuan, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he was influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Deng was instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies, however, were at odds with the political ideologies of chairman Mao Zedong. He is considered "the architect" of a new brand of socialist thinking, having developed "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and led Chinese economic reform through a synthesis of theories that became known as the "socialist market economy".