Expert: Special Economic Zones A Successful Experiment of Deng Xiaoping's Theory

PLA Daily 2004-08-11

　 　　 Sun Xuewen is an expert on contemporary studies of China with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He says the most distinctive feature of the Deng Xiaoping era is his reform and opening-up policy.

　　"Deng Xiaoping began to design the reform and opening-up policy right after the Third Plenary Session of the Party's Eleventh Central Committee in 1978. Reform was to change the economic administrative system, while opening-up was to strengthen exchanges and communication with the outside world."

　　He adds that to promote the reform and opening up policy, Deng Xiaoping also established four special economic zones along coastal areas of China. He says this was a significant experiment of utilizing foreign capital, technology and administrative experience to develop a socialist economy.

　　Southeast China's Shenzhen city is the first special economic zone in china and it has become an important window of China opening to the outside world. President of Shenzhen Academy of Social Sciences, Yue Zheng says in the past twenty years, Shenzhen has developed from a small village into a modern city, which surely should be attributed to the reform and opening-up policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping.

　　"Without the proposal and decision by Deng Xiaoping, there won't be special economic zones. And also the economic development of Shenzhen benefits a lot from the reform and opening up policy of the country. So the development of the city is closely related with Deng Xiaoping."

　　Furthermore, the policy has ended China's 500 years' isolationism and helps the country find a right way of constructing socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics.

　　Zhou Yun, CRI News