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"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 (US$1.2 trillion) 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Chinese had taken a historic leap from being adequately fed and clothed to being well-off, as a rigid and outdated economic planning system had given way to a fresh and vibrant market economy.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 the2008 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: establishing a socialist market economy.
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 News Agency November 10, 2002)
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