Reform and Opening Up Has a Decisive Effect on the Future of Contemporary China

The Qiushi commentary on advancing Chinese modernization through furthering reform was published in this year’s 13th issue of Qiushi Journal.

The article points out that reform and opening up has a decisive effect on the future of contemporary China. In December 1978, at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, our Party made a historic decision to shift the focus of the Party and the country’s work onto economic development and to launch the reform and opening up drive. 

From that moment on, Chinese Communists and the Chinese people, with their indomitable enterprising spirit and abundant experience in vigorous innovation, have overcome unprecedented difficulties on the road to progress, significantly improving China’s economic strength, composite national strength, and standard of living.

As reform unfolds, some deep-seated problems in institutions and barriers built by vested interests are becoming more apparent, which symbolizes that reform has entered a critical and difficult stage. Since the start of the new era in 2012, the CPC Central Committee led by Xi Jinping has carried out comprehensive reform with greater political courage and wisdom. Daring to tackle tough problems and navigate potential dangers, the CPC has ushered in a grand transformation of great momentum and far-reaching impact.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, General Secretary Xi Jinping has played a key role in the design, planning, and promotion of deepening reform.

He incorporated comprehensively deepening reform into the “Four Comprehensives” strategy and presided over more than 70 meetings of the Central Leading Group on Comprehensively Deepening Reform and the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, with a view to strengthening the top-level design of reform, and building a framework for institutions.

He has continuously promoted theoretical and practical innovation, injecting a strong impetus into the reform, based on a review of the valuable experience of reform and opening up.

Xi has also conducted research and studies in various regions and departments to hear people’s opinions and address their concerns. He visited Shenzhen several times in Guangdong Province, a window and experimental field of reform and opening up. He went to Xiaogang Village, the birthplace of rural reform in Anhui Province in 2016. He also visited Hainan, a new highland for China’s opening up to the outside world and the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, a frontier in China’s socialist modernization drive.

With deep insight, acute judgement and robust theoretical innovation, General Secretary Xi Jinping, as a Marxist statesman, thinker, and strategist, accurately grasps the laws of reform, summarizes historical experience, and puts forward a series of new ideas, viewpoints, and statements which are original, contemporarily relevant and instructive.

Xi’s statements on comprehensively deepening reform systematically elaborate on the essence, role, direction, goals, tasks, driving forces, and methods of reform. They provide answers to major questions such as why comprehensive deepening reform is necessary in the new era and how to advance it. These statements constitute a theoretical system with rich connotations, complete framework, and strict logic, providing powerful ideological and theoretical tools for comprehensively deepening reform, and guiding us to make historic achievements in the reform and opening up initiative.

In today’s China, breakthroughs have been made in reforms to improve economic system, democracy, the rule of law, and cultural system. Systems which guarantee the people’s livelihood have been consolidated, and those ensuring the ecological progress have been established. Progress has also been made in our Party’s development and the reform on disciplinary inspection and supervision system, and new horizons have been opened up in national defense and military reform.

The reform has achieved a transformation from exploration in certain areas to the efforts of comprehensive deepening, and from partial breakthroughs to systematic integration. Historic changes, systematic reshaping, and overall reconstruction have been made in many fields, injecting inexhaustible momentum into the building of a modern socialist country and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

At the end of the article, it is emphasized that the 20th CPC National Congress has mapped out a blueprint for building a modern socialist country on all fronts, and established the central task of advancing toward the goal of national rejuvenation and a stronger China through Chinese modernization. This task reflects the wisdom and strength of the Party and all Chinese people on the new journey, and will inevitably be the theme of further deepening reform.

Editor: Yi Xiaowei