Tuesday, December 18, 2018

China to Stick with Reform and Opening-up
Global Times
2018/12/18 21:18:40

China to stick with reform and opening-up, and world should not doubt it

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday delivered a speech at a gathering celebrating the 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up, saying "the reform and opening-up is a great awakening of our Party," and China will carry it through to the end. Many of Xi's words have circulated, tallying with Chinese society's support for the policy and the resolution to deepen it.

Reform and opening-up is a great process of practice. Generations of China's leaders, from Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao to Xi, have led China in dealing with all kinds of challenges. The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics has been established step by step. Reform and opening-up is a great pioneering work in human history.

Compared with 1978, China's economy has multiplied over a hundred times. China has been through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the Arab Spring. Its rapidly growing economy and social transformation perfectly match the stable political path. Reform and opening-up continually releases its energy.

Reform, development and perseverance are not rare in the world. What really surprises the world is how China perfectly balances reform, development and stability.

The Communist Party of China (CPC)-led reform and opening-up has miraculously made China the world's second largest economy. In 1978, China's GDP per capita was only three quarters of India's. Today China's GDP is about four times that of India's.

 But we shouldn't be complacent, as there's still a huge gap between China and developed countries' per capita income. China's modernization is a long-term and arduous task.

China will be stronger and have more resources in the future, but it will also face more challenging tasks and uncertainties.

At the early stage of reform and opening-up, the Chinese people got repayment as long as they were assiduous. But today the risks of economic activities are escalating and enterprises have to compete in domestic and global markets. It also takes hard exploration to find China's new sources of economic growth and to shape new momentum.

Many of China's economic factors are changing and the most prominent is the increase in labor costs. Meanwhile the enterprises' environmental and security costs have increased and it's a strategic issue for Chinese enterprises to create and keep an edge in global competition.

As China's internal interests are quickly dividing, it becomes harder for the Chinese people to reach a consensus. When people were relatively poor in the past, most people's priority was improving living standards and accumulating wealth.

But now people's first priorities are different, and they may get anxious facing new issues in the internet era. Economic inequality leads to division in thoughts, making it harder to unite society on significant issues.

External challenges are also adding more pressure to reform and opening-up. "In future, we will be inevitably faced with all sorts of risks and challenges, and even unimaginable tempestuous storms," Xi said in his speech on Tuesday. China should be prepared for these challenges.

Xi underscored the CPC's leadership in all work while calling for constantly enhancing and improving the Party's way of leadership. He also pointed out that the Party must remain committed to practicing scientific, democratic and law-based governance. This is the fundamental guarantee of the success of reform and opening-up.

There's no way back from China's modernization. China should follow the CPC's leadership and overcome the difficulties by pursuing firm reform and opening-up.

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