量腿长的正确方法:A vision for ruling CPCLi Hong's column

By Li Hong

Three events will serve as footnotes for the 90th anniversary of the ruing Communist Party of China: the world's single longest high-speed railroad connecting Beijing and Shanghai goes to operation; top lawmakers approve an amendment to the tax code, giving tax exemptions to low- and middle-income earners but adding tax on the rich; and probably, by coincidence, Premier Wen Jiabao visits Hungary, Britain and Germany, forging a deeper and closer partnership with Europe.

As the whole nation is celebrating the anniversary, the Party is hoped to do a better job at the steering in the coming years. Sophisticated and mature as it is, the Party needs to hold lofty the flag of China modernization that was stitched and raised by the revered Deng Xiaoping, always works for Chinese people's prosperity, and upholds justice on the global stage.

For more than 30 years, the Party has kept to its heart Deng's teaching: Development is hard logic. Consequently, it has managed a long stream of successes. The non-stop annual 10 percent economic growth since 1980 has brought China to No 2 in global economic scale, and the country is now well positioned to regain No 1 in about another decade. So, do not let up.

Investment in top-notch infrastructure will always be the rock backing up China's economic boom, in good times or bad times of global economy. Beijing's timely pump-priming measures, in the bloodbath of the 2008-2009 world financial crisis, averted a sudden slowdown and enabled Chinese economy to grow by 30 percent in the three years after the crisis, contrasting to serious contraction in the developed countries.

On June 30, sliver bullet trains begin to gallop on the Beijing-Shanghai advanced lines, shortening the 1,318-km trip to less than 5 hours -- a feat China has never before reached. Soon, the Beijing-Guangzhou, Beijing-Harbin, and Beijing-Urumqi high-speed routes will be built. Meanwhile, brand-new underground metro links in all major Chinese cites have kept extending.

And yes, the Party should work harder to broaden the line of its support by enriching the most Chinese families possible. It is not easy. Beijing could continue to inspire private entrepreneurship and ownership, and in the same time, craft a set of favorable policies targeting the vulnerable and needy groups -- the migrant workers, and the urban and rural poor. The Party has scrapped its obsolete goal of egalitarianism, but dividing income disparity is a social ill that will harm the rock of stability, and must be overcome.

The NPC Standing Committee's approval of cutting tax burdens on low and middle-tier income earners, while levying more on top-tiers, is therefore a decision in the right direction. Unlike other developed countries, China needs to bestow more benefits in free medical care and bigger social securities to the middle class, while fix the loopholes through which the wealthy dodge taxes.

Then, the Party should stick to Deng Xiaoping's trademark policy of reform and opening-up to the outside world. Everyone knows that without that policy, China could not have attained what it is today.

Premier Wen Jiabao, just before the Party's 90th anniversary, paid a five-day visit to Europe. Few countries in the world have as much to gain from mutually beneficial trade and cooperation as those in Europe and China, commented a Western scholar.

In his speech to Britain's Royal Society, he expounded on reform and opening-up. China, according to Wen, needs to nurture people's democracy, letting the vast public supervise and criticize the government through varied means. The Party could become more powerful and well-wished by the people, if it listens, more attentively, to the people. To become more democratic, the Party could combat a more effective war on another ill – corruption that people hate most.

Wen spoke of his vision for future China: Economically well developed and people enjoying affluence, politically democratic and socially civilized; a global power that upholds peace and justice. It is a vision for the Party, too.