Abstract: Deng Xiaoping was a brave pioneer of socialist market economy theory. His understanding of the socialist market economy has gone through partial exploration and intuitive understanding during the period of the New Democratic Revolution, preliminary exploration and rational understanding during the period of socialist revolution and construction, and comprehensive exploration and theoretical innovation in the new era of reform and opening up and socialist modernization construction. Systematically answer a series of major questions, such as why to develop a socialist market economy, what a socialist market economy looks like, and how to develop socialist market economy. It has been clarified that in the process of developing socialist market economy, it is necessary to handle a series of important relationships, such as productive forces and production relations, economic foundation and superstructure, planning and market, goals and means, getting rich first and getting rich later, independence and opening up to the outside world, reform, development and stability. This still has important guiding significance for the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics.