| China
owes 13-year success to pathbreaking CPC central leadership (11/10/2002)
"It was the correct choice of our entire Party to endorse
the leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Jiang
Zemin at its core," Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's
reform and opening up, told the country 's top military brass in
November 1989 shortly after his full retirement.
Thirteen years have elapsed and time has proved Deng's political
farsightedness: under the guidance of the Communist Party of China
(CPC)'s third-generation collective leadership with Jiang at the
core, China's reform and opening up drive has achieved a historic
breakthrough and a brand new situation has emerged for the cause
of building socialism with Chinese characteristics initiated by
Deng.
Since 1989, China's gross domestic product (GDP) has maintained
an average annual growth of 9.3 percent and is expected to exceed
10 trillion RMB yuan (about 1.2 trillion US dollars) this year.
At the turn of the century, life of the 1.2-billion-strong Chinese
had taken a historic leap from being adequately fed and clothed
to being well-off, as a rigid and outdated economic planning system
had given way to a fresh and vibrant market economy.
The past decade has also witnessed a constant rise of China's prestige
in the international community, as the number of countries with
diplomatic ties with China has increased from 137 to 165 and a series
of events have repeatedly put China in the spotlight of global media.
Such events include the return of Hong Kong and Macao, Beijing's
success in winning the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games, China's
entry into the World Trade Organization and the hosting of APEC
(Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) meetings by Shanghai.
"We are now in the best of historical periods since the founding
of New China in 1949," said Sun Ying, director of the Party
history research center of the CPC Central Committee.
A German businessman who had visited China several times said,
"China has a group of highly competent leaders."
Many Chinese still have a fresh memory of February 1997, when their
beloved leader Deng Xiaoping passed away. They also remember what
Jiang Zemin said at Deng's memorial service on behalf of the third-generation
CPC leaders: "It's our unwavering determination and faith to
hold higher the banner of Deng Xiaoping's theory of building socialism
with Chinese characteristics and do a better job in implementing
the Party's basic line on the new path of cross-century advancement."
While some Western media were still "worrying" about
whether China could maintain its political stability in the "post-Deng
era ", the third generation of Party leaders, with such determination
and faith as proclaimed by Jiang, have led their country in overcoming
one difficulty after another, from the 1997 Asian financial crisis
to the 1998 catastrophic summer flooding, and from state sector
reform to global economic recession.
Overseas observers hold that with the CPC third-generation collective
leadership at the helm, China's reform and opening up cause in the
past 13 years has never deviated from the central task of developing
the economy, and has also set a clear objective^Meanwhile, they
say, the door of China has kept opening wider to the outside world
all these years. A recent United Nations survey predicted that this
year China is likely to overtake the United States as the world's
number one recipient of international investment money.
Bai Hejin, a professor with the Macroeconomic Research Institute
affiliated to China's State Development Planning Commission, said
that it was a "Goldbach's conjecture" in the social-economic
history of mankind to combine socialism with a market economy, and
that China's initial success in this regard should be attributed
to the third-generation Party leaders who have led the Chinese people
in "exploring for a correct path step by step with a pioneering
spirit".
"Taking the overall situation into account, the third- generation
leaders have also done a good job of handling the relationship between
reform, development and stability, thus preventing economic restructuring
from exerting a major negative impact on the Chinese society,"
Bai added.
At the beginning of the new century, Jiang Zemin has put forward
his Three Represents thought. Leading experts in China's theoretical
circles have found it to be a "continuation, development and
enrichment" of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng
Xiaoping Theory.
"This important thought is a creation by the CPC third- generation
collective leadership, who have applied basic principles of Marxism
to resolve new concrete problems in China's reform, opening up and
modernization drive," one expert said. "The thought has
pooled the collective wisdom of the Party and therefore will serve
as a long-term guiding ideology for the CPC."
"Creation, more creations and still more creations, this is
what the CPC will pursue in the future under the guidance of the
important thought of Three Represents," said Leng Rong, executive
deputy director of the Party literature research center of the CPC
Central Committee.
Dai Xianglong, governor of the People's Bank of China and also
a delegate to the ongoing 16th CPC National Congress, used an old
Chinese saying to express his appreciation of outstanding contributions
the third-generation Party leaders have made to the country.
"One can never tell the difficulty of scoring a success unless
he has personally experienced it," said Dai. "Seeing today's
accomplishments and recalling past difficulties and challenges,
I have to say we are lucky to have a strong and mature Party and
a broad-visioned and extremely-capable third-generation leadership
core to guide us through."
But most ordinary Chinese might prefer to express their feelings
toward the Party central leadership with verses of a song which
has gone extremely popular in China in recent years:"China
is witnessing a relay race which will guarantee its future, as our
pathbreaking leader is guiding us into a new era".
(xinhua)
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