Deng Xiaoping is a great political figure not only in China, but also in the world. His “Three-Up-and-Down” is very typical and outstanding political experience, with certain regularity. Focused on President Deng 's legendary experience, this study adopts method of grounded theory to conduct qualitative research and to explore Deng's ability of mental resilience to strive from difficulties.

Six biographies, anthologies and memoirs, including “Deng Xiaoping's Self- Narration”, “Deng Xiaoping Biography (1904-1974)”, “Deng Xiaoping Era”, “Deng Xiaoping’s Selected Works”, “Deng Xiaoping's Three Up-and-Down”, were selected as the data sources. The research adopts Nvivo12 qualitative research software to encode the data at first level. The seven protective factors of Deng Xiaoping’s resilience will be analyzed by dimensioning from concept to category, which are firm ideal belief, positive political personality, excellent physical and mental quality, rich practical experience, support of important others, support of family, realistic action strategy.

Among the seven protective factors, there are some correlations. Ideal belief, political personality, basic quality and working experience are Deng Xiaoping's internal characteristics. Significant others and family support are external support. Action strategy are the interaction between him and external environment. After further generalization, refinement and abstraction, the protective factors have formed three main categories: internal characteristics, external support and interaction strategy. The study introduces the mechanism of Deng Xiaoping's resilience by examining the role and mode of the three main categories in Deng Xiaoping's active adaptation to adversity. The discussion part focuses on the particularity of political leaders, including: strong and soft action strategy, unswerving political belief, like-minded important others, experience and ability’s mutual promotion. Among them, the flexible action strategy is the most representative special existence of the psychological resilience protection factor of political leaders，which is also an important finding of this study.