To mark the 20th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, both Xinhua and the People's Daily published commentaries to push for reforms. Xinhua said if China wants to keep writing its 'Story of Spring', it must deepen its reform efforts, including changing the government's roles and functions. And the People's Daily rallied the country to press on: 'Reforms carry risks, but the party would be in danger without reform.'
Premier Wen Jiabao himself affirmed Deng's call for reform, warning on a visit to Guangdong last month that the country would 'come to a dead end without reform and opening up'. He said Deng's words were still of great relevance today and should continue to guide China.
Neither the articles nor Wen made mention specifically of political reform, but many people understood their remarks to mean that. China's economic development is increasingly mired in the quicksand of Chinese politics, and its many social problems cannot be solved without political development. The rallying cry for reform from the top ranks of China's political hierarchy have made people hopeful and excited.
Deng had so often spoken up for political reform that people believe Chinese politics would be very different today if he were still alive. So, they reason, China's most urgent task is to return to Deng's road map for reform.
This is bizarre thinking, because China has never veered off course. For a start, Deng hand-picked the two men who succeeded him. But, more importantly, the problems we see now in China - the unbalanced and distorted development, rampant corruption, a wide income gap and deterioration of human rights protection - are all by-products of Deng's reform.
The Chinese model of economic development first caught international attention in 2004, when American scholar Joshua Cooper Ramo published a paper on 'The Beijing Consensus'. Since then, many Chinese scholars have praised the model as being eminently suitable for China; some even say today it could save a global economy in crisis. Before long, some historians of the Communist Party pointed out that the credit for such a good development model belonged not to Ramo but to Deng, who in fact proposed the idea a long time ago and had put it into practice.
Starting from the early 1980s, Deng had indeed spoken often of China's need to forge its own pathway for development. His description of the strategy is by now well-known: Chinese development must have one central task (economic development) and two basic points (adherence to reform and opening up, and adherence to the four cardinal principles).