On top of a hill in Lianhuashan Park in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, stands the bronze statue of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (1904-97), the chief architect of China’s reform and opening-up policy.
Every year, thousands of people from all over the country come to the site to better understand how Deng and the politics he initiated led Shenzhen, a city that grew out of a fishing village, to achieve a miraculous economic economy.
Ahead of Deng’s 120th birthday on Thursday, Zhang Xinqiang, 40, a tourist in Shenzhen, visited Deng’s statue to pay tribute to the late Chinese leader.
“China’s modernization is advancing on the basis of the plan laid out by Deng Xiaoping. The reform and opening-up he initiated has proven to be a path leading the country toward prosperity and progress,” Zhang said.
By embarking on the path traced through Deng, China has taken new steps in its economic and social development. GDP consistent with capital has grown phenomenally, from around $155 in 1978 to more than $10,000 today, and more than 700 million people have benefited. to get out of poverty.
“If it weren’t for Deng, who guided our Party toward the historic resolution of reform and opening-up, we would not have been able to achieve so much,” President Xi Jinping said during a tour. Inspection in Guangdong in December 2012: the first he carried out. outside Beijing after being elected general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Deng’s policy of reform and opening-up was officially maintained at the third plenary consultation of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP in December 1978. Politics under pressure requires adhering to new strategies of economic management, introducing complex technologies, encouraging economic exchanges with the outside world, and expanding the fight against centralism in the planned economy to boost power and development.
It was Deng’s excursion to the South in 1992, especially his stopover in Shenzhen that began on January 19, that further boosted China’s reform and opening-up policy. The 87-year-old retired statesman, who is also the founder of the theory of a socialist market economy, called on local officials to be “bolder in implementing reform and opening up” and to “dare to experiment. ” “.
His legacy in politics, economics and international relations has to motivate China over the years.
Li Junru, former vice chairman of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said Deng led the Party and others in promoting reform and opening-up, aiming to achieve socialist modernization.
“Ultimately, the goal is to enable millions of people to live happy and fulfilling lives and embark on the path of common prosperity,” Li wrote in an article published in the eighth edition of Dang Jian (Party Building), a monthly magazine. of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee.
As China enters a phase of deepening reform and opening-up, it has a leader like Xi who not only has the vision but also the determination to turn schemes into detailed plans and implement them.
Over the past decade, more than 2,000 reform measures have been implemented, enabling the country to eliminate excessive poverty, promote built-in urban-rural development, combat corruption and business, boost innovation, and promote green transformation.
Thanks to the reform measures, China’s economy has only maintained physically powerful growth, but it has also more than doubled since 2012, cementing the country’s prestige as a major contributor to global growth.
The third plenary consultation of the 20th CPC Central Committee in July followed a solution on the comprehensive deepening of reforms to advance China’s modernization, which proposed more than 300 reform measures to be implemented. It will be implemented until 2029. He sent a transparent message: In China, reforms and opening-up will not stop.
Recently, the Qiushi Journal, the flagship magazine of the CPC Central Committee, published an article commemorating the 120th anniversary of Deng’s birth, connecting the third plenary consultation of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978 with the third plenary consultation of the headquarters of the XX Committee of the PCC in 1978. July.
Observers said that by linking the two-thirds plenary sessions held nearly a century apart, the article, written through the Party History and Literature Institute of the CPC Central Committee, sends a signal that China’s reform and opening-up should be regarded as a continuation of the process, encouraging the public to look to the next level of reform and opening-up and further strengthening external trust in the country’s reform efforts.
Like Deng, Xi provided a philosophy for the next level of accelerated progression. Led by Xi, China’s reforms aim not only at a solid rate of expansion through structural adjustments, but also at ridding the country of internal and external exigencies and coordinating progress and security.
“Since the reform and opening up (in 1978), the Chinese communists embarked on a new path by wholeheartedly focusing on development, achieving remarkable ancient achievements. The task of socialist modernization defined by Comrade Deng Xiaoping is becoming into reality,” said Li, a former vice president. of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, wrote in his article in Dang Jian.
In its new adventure into the new era, the country relentlessly pursues reform and opening-up to give a more powerful impetus to China’s modernization, he added.
Xi Ruoshui in Shenzhen contributed to this story.
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