WHENEVER DENG Xiaoping emerged into the public eye in the last years of his life, his youngest daughter, Deng Rong, was at his side, a supportive hand on his elderly elbow. She seemed to be a cross between bodyguard, nurse and human hearing aid, but many onlookers believe that she and her siblings were the power behind the throne.
Deng's five children became his legs, eyes, ears and even voice long after his own had gone. They were his gatekeepers and his aides, controlling the flow of information and acting as envoys to world leaders.
They are China's first family, and although they have no constitutional right to succeed him, the tradition of dynastic rule is strong. During Deng's lifetime his children worked largely behind the scenes, under orders to stay out of the limelight. Now they may act as power brokers, passing on and interpreting their father's final wishes.
Together, Deng's two younger daughters appear to have masterminded the re emergence of their father in the early 1990s.
Both accompanied him on his trip to southern China in spring 1992 and appear devoted to the survival of his reforms.
Deng's favourite was Deng Rong, who was his private secretary and published a biography of her father in 1993. It was she who told the world in January 1995 that Deng's health was "declining day by day". She soon said she had been misquoted.
Previously a middle ranking official in the People's Liberation Army, she is married to He Ping, a former military attache to China's embassy in Washington and the president of Polytechnologies, one of China's arms dealers.
Deng Nan, the second daughter, is already a high ranking official. A physicist, she is a deputy minister in the State Science and Technology Commission. She is credited with spreading news of her father's reappearance in the south in 1992 when he relaunched China's economic reforms.
But Deng Nan, like some of Deng's other children, is not entirely free from the cloud of scandal.
It was the State Science and technology commission which in 1993 approved the sale of bonds which proved to be fraudulent, and many asked how, as a deputy minister, Deng Nan could have been unaware of what was going on.
Many people do not trust the Deng offspring, believing they have used the accident of their birth for personal gain. Despite repeated campaigns against corruption, none of Deng's children has been publicly castigated.
The older of his two sons, Deng Pufang, who also studied physics, was crippled when he was pushed from a fourth floor window during the Cultural Revolution. He heads the Chinese Federation for the Disabled.
His name, too, was linked - perhaps unfairly - with dubious business practices when the Kanghua Corporation, with which he was involved, was closed down on suspicion of corruption.
Deng's other son has warmly embraced the free market reforms his father initiated.
Deng Zhifang, another physicist, was educated in the US, and returned to China in 1987. Since then he has worked at China's main foreign trade organisation, the China International Trust and investment Corporation, despite orders - intended to halt nepotism - that sons and daughters of top leaders were to leave CITIC.
In the boom of the early 1990s, Deng Zhifang took advantage of soaring property prices to become chairman of the state owned Shanghai Grand Development Company.
The project launch was held in May 1993 at an exclusive Hong Kong club and attended by senior Chinese government officials. Deng's eldest daughter, plump and bespectacled Deng Lin, has so far shown more interest in art than in politics. She has exhibited her works in Hong Kong and Japan, but art critics in the West suggest that the reason her works attract high prices is more to do with the fame of her father than her talent.