China's reform saga gets world audience

Born in Bodh Gaya, a sacred Buddhist place in India, Ranvijay Sinha's early knowledge of China came from the story about a Chinese monk trekking thousands of miles to India to seek sutras to enlighten his country.

Having grown up with this 1,300-year-old story "Journey to the West," Sinha, 30, later made his personal journey to the east, this time to seek wisdom from a rising China.

"Though India opened up to the world earlier than China, it did not achieve as much as China did," said Sinha.

Sinha first visited China in 2005, expecting to see an orderly communist state where people uniformly worshiped Mao Zedong. That belief was soon replaced by awe at the openness and vitality of Beijing.

"I had never imagined Beijing had places like Sanlitun, where you met people of different colors and nationalities, and in shops you saw all foreign-branded garments and digital gear," Sinha said.

After years of studying and working in China, Sinha has observed major feats of reform, including development of the transportation and manufacturing sectors, but what truly impressed him was perseverance and flexibility.

"Since Deng Xiaoping started things off, Chinese reformers have been constantly adjusting their objectives to suit the changing domestic needs and global environment," Sinha said.

In the latest move, the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday issued new guidelines that promised to give the market a bigger role and push for changes in various areas, including the urban-rural relations and the judicial system.

The CPC will also establish a leading group for "comprehensively deepening reform."

LIVING WITH A CHANGING CHINA

The socioeconomic landscape of China today is beyond recognition compared with the years before 1978.

David Ben Kay, former general counsel of Microsoft China, recalls that when he first visited China in 1980, people bought daily necessities with coupons due to scanty supplies in the planned economy.

"There were only few shops in Beijing selling imported food, which could be purchased only using 'foreign exchange certificates'," he said.

The certificate became obsolete in 1995, three years after China officially decided to build a market economy. In 2001, China joined the WTO and was embraced by global market. Now imported food can be easily bought in supermarkets or online.

"Now looking back, I find China's development full of surprises," said Kay, who now runs a company in China offering advice to local and foreign start-ups. Boasting entrepreneurship and innovation, many new companies have footholds in the expanding Chinese market.

"The whole world enjoys 'made-in-China'. Chinese products are now everywhere in Indian households, from clothes to light bulbs. Even the statues in many Indian temples are carved by Chinese," Sinha said.