The People's Daily yesterday continued its onslaught against diehard Marxists who questioned reformist theories put forward by Deng Xiaoping.
On its front page the Communist Party mouthpiece published another diatribe to defend the no-holds-barred experiment pioneered by Deng.
It cited Shenzhen and Wenzhou in Zhejiang province as two examples of Deng's reform success, arguing that the two cities would not have been built if the leftists had had their way.
Defending Shenzhen, it said: 'Years of leftist influence have made it difficult for us to shake off all at once our worries about 'socialism' versus 'capitalism'. We have in one way or another tried to judge the right or wrong of it [Shenzhen] using different standards.
'But could we imagine there would be a prosperous and developed city in southern China today had we kept on arguing?' Both Shenzhen and Wenzhou were hailed by reformists as two beacons of Deng's capitalist-style reform experiments but attacked by the leftists as betrayal of the nation's socialist tradition.
The commentary said it was unnecessary to debate whether China should have embraced such un-Marxist concepts as free markets, private enterprise and stock exchanges.
