BEIJING - As China awaits future government policies with the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on the horizon, it can review the great progress in political, economic and cultural spheres over the past decade.
It is important to recognize that this has been, and will continue to be, bolstered by reform initiatives that have kept pace with the times.
From the bottom-up approach when China began to try out reform in the agricultural sector in 1978, China has become more confident in its policy readjustments since 2002.
Economically, China has made the knowledge-based economy more salient and championed a more sustainable and environmentally friendly development mode.
The country is in the process of changing its economic strategy -- it launched a 4-trillion-yuan ($640 billion) stimulus package after the global financial crisis in 2008 and moved handily from export dependency to development of a domestic market against the backdrop of a global decline in demand for Chinese goods.
Regarding foreign investment, China has reduced its bureaucratic regulations and state interventions that hampered investment from overseas, allowing the country to attain a level of openness that is rarely found among large and populous nations. China is now the second-biggest recipients of foreign direct investment in the world, with competition from foreign products in almost every sector of the economy.
Socially, the government has adopted more egalitarian and populist policies. It abolished agricultural taxes, subsidized health care, expanded the social insurance network and made basic education more accessible -- all measures aimed at enabling the public to benefit from economic prosperity.
50,000 gay people attended same sex parade in Taiwan