Hu: Deng sets a glorious example for people
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-08-22 10:30

Chinese President Hu Jintao said Sunday late leader Deng Xiaoping has set a shining example for the people through his unremitting efforts to struggle for the Chinese nation, his indelible contributions to the Party and his noble moral character as a great leader.

A grand ceremony is held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to commemorate the 100th birthday of late leader Deng Xiaoping. [xinhua]

At a grand gathering to commemorate the birth centenary of Deng in the Great Hall of the People, Hu enumerated Deng's achievements and contributions in various stages of his life.

One hundred years ago, Deng Xiaoping was born in Guang'an County, Sichuan Province. At that time, the Chinese nation sustained deep misery under feudal oppression and aggression of foreign powers. People with high ideals were groping the correct way to save China.

From his childhood, Deng Xiaoping was determined to join the struggle to rejuvenate and save the country and nation. He went to study in Europe under a work-study program in his early years and there became a member of the Communist Party of China (CPC), beginning his revolutionary career.

After he returned to China, he devoted himself whole-heartedly to the CPC-led fight for national independence and the liberation of the people. From the Agrarian Revolutionary War to the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, Deng was a close comrade-in-arms of Mao Zedong. He made outstanding contributions to the triumph of the New-Democratic Revolution and the birth of New China and became one of the founders of the People's Republic of China.

After New China was founded in 1949, Deng became an important member of the first generation of central collective leadership with Mao Zedong at the core.

During the "Cultural Revolution," Deng was wrongly criticized and had all his posts deprived of. He resumed working in 1973, and in 1975 took charge of the day-to-day affairs of the Party, the state and the military. In the tit-for-tat struggle with the Gang of Four, Deng was again wrongly criticized and deprived of his posts.

Following the downfall of the Gang of Four and the end of the "Cultural Revolution," Deng was restored to his former posts. Under his guidance, the 11th CPC Central Committee held its Third Plenary Session in December 1978. It was at the meeting that the CPC Central Committee re-established the ideological line of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts, and made the important decision to shift the focus of the work of the Party and the state to socialist modernization, and carry out reform and opening up.

"The convening of the Third Plenary Session marked that Comrade Deng Xiaoping has become the core of the second generation of the Party's central collective leadership," said Hu.

Deng worked with the central collective leadership to guide the Party in systematically summing up the historical experience since the founding of New China and navigating the correct direction for the development of the Party and the state, he said.

Under his guidance, Hu said, the Party established the "three-step" development strategy for China's modernization, boldly opened to the outside world, promoted the overall development in economic, political and cultural fields, as well as national defense and army building.

Deng's creative ideas strong theoretical guidance to China

The creative ideas of late leader Deng Xiaoping and the policies he put forward have provided a strong theoretical guidance to the continuous development of the cause of the Party and people, said Hu.

He said that Deng, with his great political courage and creative ideas, had developed Marxism and brought the socialist cause with Chinese characteristics into a new stage.

"The most distinctive feature of Comrade Deng Xiaoping's scientific world outlook is emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts," Hu said.

Stressing that practice is the sole criterion of truth, Deng was a master in summing up new experience, putting forward new proposals and opening up new roads from the latest practices and under new situation, said Hu.

With his deep understanding of Marxism and great political foresight, Deng for the first time gave a systematic answer on how to build, consolidate and further develop socialism in an economically and culturally backward country like China and gave acomplete definition of socialism in the preliminary stage.

Hu listed some of Deng's outstanding theoretical creations suchas concentrating on development, allowing some regions and people to get rich first so they can help others for common prosperity, and planning and the market are only means of economic development rather than the symbols of socialism and capitalism.

Deng was also credited by Hu for advocating the household responsibility system in agricultural production, the reform of the Party and government's leadership system and the abolition of the life-long tenure system of cadres, and the scientific idea of "one country, two systems" for settling the issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

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