BEIJING: On a hilltop at Lianhuashan Park in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, stands the bronze statue of late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (1904-97), the chief architect of China’s reform and opening-up policy.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the country come to visit the site with a view to having a better understanding of how Deng and the policy he initiated have led Shenzhen, a metropolis that arose from a fishing village, to achieve an economic miracle.
Ahead of the 120th anniversary of Deng’s birth, which falls on Thursday, Zhang Xinqiang, 40, a tourist in Shenzhen, visited Deng’s statue to pay respects to the late Chinese leader.
“China’s modernization is making progress based on the blueprint set out by Deng Xiaoping. The reform and opening-up he initiated has turned out to be a right path leading the country toward prosperity and progress,” Zhang said.
Embarking on the path set by Deng, China has achieved new milestones in its economic and social development. Per capita GDP increased phenomenally from about $155 in 1978 to over $10,000 today, and more than 700 million people have been lifted out of poverty.
“If there were no Deng who guided our Party to make the historic decision to reform and open up, we couldn’t have achieved this much,” President Xi Jinping said during an inspection tour of Guangdong in December 2012 — the first one he made outside Beijing after being elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
Deng’s reform and opening-up policy was officially embraced at the third plenary session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in December 1978. The policy outlined the need to follow new economic management methods, introduce advanced technologies, boost economic exchanges with the outside world and scale down centralism in the planned economy to spur vitality and development. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
