The Paramount Importance of Deepening Reform Comprehensively

[i] The article was published in the December 4, 2013 issue of The People’s Daily.

[ii] The report delivered at the Sixteenth National Congress of the CPC stated that we would concentrate our energies, in the first twenty years of the 21^st century, on building a well-off society comprehensively for the Chinese people of more than one billion, so that the economy would be more developed, the democracy would be improved, science, technology, and education would make further progress, the national culture would be thriving, the society would be more harmonious, and the people’s lives would be more affluent.

The report delivered at the Seventeenth National Congress of the CPC raised higher requirements on the basis of the goal established at the Sixteenth National Congress of the CPC, including: increasing coordination in economic development and striving for better, quicker development; expanding socialist democracy and making greater efforts to guarantee the people’s interests and social equity and justice; strengthening cultural construction to significantly improve the quality of the Chinese nation; accelerating the development of social causes to improve the people’s lives comprehensively; and building up an ecological system so that the industrial structure, modes of economic growth, and consumption are energy- and resource-saving and eco-friendly.  

[iii] In September 1988, commenting on the price and salary reform packages, Deng Xiaoping said, “The coastal region should speed up opening up. With a population of 200 million, a developed coastal region will stimulate the development of the interior regions. This is a major consideration, and the interior regions should be open to it. On the other hand, we will require that the coastal region assist development of the interior regions by the time they have developed to a certain level. This is another major consideration, and the coastal region should be open to it.   

[iv] Proposed by President Hu Jintao in his report delivered at the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC in November 2012, these include self-confidences in China’s political system, the party line, and party theories. 

[v] Under the “three-step” strategy adopted at the Thirteenth National Congress of the CPC in 1987, China was to double its GDP of 1980 by 1990, quadruple its 1980 GDP by 2000, with the people living fairly comfortable lives, and be on par with mid-ranking developed countries by 2049, or the 100^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.