"Deng Xiaoping is such a great man that we farmers would not have lived our present life today if it hadn't been for the reforms he propelled nearly 30 years ago," said 55-year-old farmer Li Shulin. "We will never forget this great man though he left us 10 years ago."

Li was remembering Deng Xiaoping, the man who led China on its current path of market and social reforms, on the 10th anniversary of his death recently.

Deng died on February 19, 1997, aged 93, from a lung infection and Parkinson's disease. That year also witnessed the return of Hong Kong to its motherland, which was Deng's biggest wish in his later years. He passed away just five months before the historical event took place.

Though not wealthy, Li feels grateful to Deng for the reforms he set in place. In the eyes of honest and simple farmers who have been through famine, "his reforms saved us from starving," Li said.

Times and attitudes in China have changed and although there are still many loyal admirers of Deng and his reforms, some have begun to question their success. Some observers, particularly among China's urban elite and intellectuals, have cited the widening gap between the country's rich and poor, corruption, and the plundering of China's natural resources, as examples of how the reforms have failed.

Unique path

Known around the world as the "little great man", Deng was a chief contributor towards the rapid development in China today. In his lifetime he was given a great many accolades, among which the title "chief designer of China's reform and opening up" remains the most impressive.

At a top party plenary session in December 1978, reform was made a fundamental national policy and China began to take its unique path towards development and building "socialism with Chinese characteristics". It was directly after this meeting that Deng became the central player in China's leadership pushing reforms forward.

China's program of reform began in agriculture. Farmers benefited from the development of the household contract responsibility system (a contract system with remuneration linked to output) and the rural economy was given a needed boost through the development of township enterprises, adjusting the agricultural structure and developing infrastructure.

Despite the initial focus of China's agricultural base, Deng realized that the nation's future lay in its industry. With this in mind the government embarked on a path of that would see China's rural areas providing both cheap labor and raw materials for industrial development. It was this path, many believe, that led to an imbalance in China's economic development with rural areas losing out to urban ones. Rural parts of the country contributed significantly towards China's new path of development, yet benefited not much compared to Chinese cities, leading to a growing disparity of wealth between rich and poor. And in the push for industrial development China also ignored environmental pollution, according to the policies' critics.

Others believe that despite their faults, Deng's policies for developing China were a great success. The reforms helped to pull China out of a 10-year recession, led to greater opportunities for the country's citizens, and encouraged foreign business to invest in China. Deng brought China into the modern world economy through the fast lane, a process that is still taking shape today.

According to Xu Youyu, a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the reform was not impulsive, but a forced reaction in the face of the grim situation of a country. Reform was the last hope for the country.

Facing opposition

Like any major social and economic reform in history, China's shift from a planned economy to a market one has been controversial.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, due to particular political reasons both domestically and internationally, the country's foreign trade plummeted and foreign investors were reluctant to come to China.

Domestically, questions about how to deepen China's reforms were surfacing. Conservatives in the Party were wary that China was stepping toward capitalism by tiptoeing to a market economy. Some scorned the country's special economic zones, which Deng had initiated.

Studying the domestic and foreign situation, the then retired Deng began to worry that marketalization might go astray and the country's economy might begin to slide downhill.

Deng came to the realization that someone had to speak out to strengthen the country's faith in the reforms and in 1992 the 88-year-old Deng started his tour of south China, traveling to Shenzhen, the mainland's first economic pilot reform zone next to Hong Kong, and Shanghai, the financial center of the eastern seaboard. He made speeches during his trip in response to critics of his faith in economic development, and his belief that it is a prerequisite for political reform.

In 1992, the third generation of central leadership, headed by Jiang Zemin, officially defined a socialist market economic system as the goal of national reform. The Chinese Communist Party also officially endorsed Deng Xiaoping Theory as a guide for the Party.

"Deng solved the dispute and doubt about the reforms by a series of strong gestures, and thus avoided giving-up on the uneasy reforms," said Xu.

In 2004, the reform process confronted another round of skepticism when certain scholars began to doubt its fairness. Some went to the extreme of saying that "a stop to the reform is better than a distorted and unfair one".

Again the government's central leadership fought back against skepticism and reiterated that the reform process and opening-up of China to the world economy that goes with it would not only be maintained but also strengthened.

"The top leadership is determined to deepen the reform instead of wasting time in the good-or-bad debate," Wang Changjiang, a reform minded scholar who works at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, told Beijing Review. "After all they know it's more crucial to solve real problems than verbal arguments."

The common good

According to Xu, it is easy to answer the question of "whether to reform" but not so easy to come up with a quick answer as to "how to reform".

"It's necessary to reflect on reform while sticking to it. The more downright we reflect on it, the more thorough it goes," said Xu.

"We've got to ask the ultimate question: who on earth are the reforms intended for? This question is the key when we reflect on our reform," he noted.

In Xu's opinion, the fundamental problem with China's reform process is that the country's political and legal environments have so far failed to keep up with the pace of marketalization. The question, he believes, is not how to hold back the marketalization process but how to regulate and normalize the market economy.

Early in the reform process the key task was to provide China's citizens with adequate food and clothing. Entering 2000, the number of impoverished citizens had declined to about 20 million from 250 million two decades earlier. With this accomplished, social needs such as compulsory education, social security, and environmental protection became the focus.

"With the economic development and finance increase, the government should focus on social fairness and provide basic public services for the people and let them enjoy the fruits of reform," said former People's Daily Deputy Editor-in-Chief Zhou Ruijin.