At the end of the 1970s, China started implementing the policy of reform and opening up initiated by Mr. Deng Xiaoping and stepped on the path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. Over the past 28 years earthshaking changes have taken place in China. The key is three adherences.

First, adherence to economic construction. Economic construction is an overriding task of China. China is a developing country and development is the key to solving all of China's problems. We are determined to eliminate all interferences and insist on economic construction unswervingly to seek development. From 1978 to 2005, China's GDP increased from $216.5 billion to $2.23 trillion, with an average annual growth rate of 9.6 percent, the per-capita GDP rose from $226 to more than $1,700, up by almost 7 folds and grain output grew from 300 million tons to 480 million tons, successfully solving the problem of feeding a population accounting for almost 20 percent of the world's total. At the beginning of the 1990s China almost had no expressway, but now the total mileage of expressways open to traffic has reached 41,000 km, ranking second in the world. In 2005, China's port cargo handling capacity stood at 4.9 billion tons and international container handling capacity was 75.8 million twenty-feet equivalent unit (TEU), both being the largest in the world. In China, the average annual income of urban and rural residents has increased by 5.1 and 5.2 folds respectively and the per-capita housing areas of urban and rural residents rose from 6.7 square meters and 8.1 square meters to 25 square meters and 29.7 square meters, respectively. Automobiles have entered ordinary Chinese families. In 2005 car sales in China reached 3.13 million. China's life expectancy rose from 35 years prior to 1949 to 72 years, exceeding the average level of middle-income countries. Nine-year compulsory education is basically popularized and illiteracy among young and middle-aged people is eliminated in China. The number of on-campus college students rose from 860,000 in 1978 to 15.62 million in 2005. China's rural poor population dropped from 250 million in 1978 to 23.65 million in 2005. Now the Chinese people generally enjoy a well-off life.

Second, adherence to the political development road with Chinese characteristics. The political development road with Chinese characteristics is the basic guarantee for the long-term stability of China. The political system of a country can only be decided by the people of the country according to its basic national conditions. In line with China's national conditions, the Chinese people have chosen their own political development road. In terms of regime, China adopts the National People's Congress (NPC) system. People's congress exercises the supreme state power and all the administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the state are created by the people's congress for which they are held accountable and by which they are supervised. Such a system not only allows full democracy and injects dynamism into the national political life but also enables us to pool resources to solve major problems and raise working efficiency. In terms of political party system, China implements the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation led by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The CPC holds the core leadership and is the ruling party. The democratic parties are neither out-parties nor opposition parties, but parties participating in the management of state affairs. Currently there are eight democratic parties in China who have altogether 176,000 members serving as deputies to the people's congresses at different levels and 32,000 members serving as officials above the county level. On all the major policies concerning state affairs, the NPC makes full consultations with the democratic parties. As a large developing country with a population of 1.3 billion, China has maintained an average annual economic growth rate of 9.6 percent, achieved remarkable growth of the comprehensive national strength, brought increasing living standards to the people and enjoyed national solidarity, social stability and rising international position over the 28 years since the launch of reform and opening up, which fully demonstrate that the political development road independently chosen by the Chinese people complies with China's reality, the trend of the times and the will of the people and is beneficial to the national prosperity. We will unswervingly follow this road.