In January 1992, during his southern tour, Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) visits the China Folk Culture Village in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province. Deng's southern tour signals the start of the second wave of China's reform and opening-up. [Photo by Tang Jun/China News Service]

For the past 45 years of reform and opening-up that began in late 1978, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has led 1.4 billion Chinese in engaging with the outside world and creating global miracles. This grand practice has nurtured a significant spirit, which in turn inspires and guides further great practices.

On December 13, 1978, Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), the chief architect of China's reform and opening up policy, gave a speech titled Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth From Facts and Unite as One in Looking to the Future at the closing session of the CPC Central Work Conference. This speech became a manifesto for developing and constructing the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee was convened on December 18, 1978, in Beijing, officially initiating the reform, opening-up and socialist modernization.

At the opening session of the 12th CPC National Congress in September 1982, Deng called on China to carve a path of our own and build socialism with Chinese characteristics by applying the universal truth of Marxism to China's specific context. The CPC for the first time made achieving xiaokang, meaning moderate prosperity, the overall objective of China's economic development, and set the goal of delivering a life of moderate cultural and material prosperity for the people by the end of the 20th century. This marked the full launch of China's reform and opening-up.

In the 1990s, the CPC implemented key reforms to set the goals and basic framework for the socialist market economy. It promoted reforms in state-owned enterprises and financial systems and implemented cross-century strategies such as sustainable development, revitalizing the country through science and education, and western development. China also joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. 

During this period, China resumed the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macao and reached the 1992 Consensus on Taiwan, which defines the nature of cross-Strait relations as both the mainland and Taiwan belong to one China, expanding cross-Strait exchanges. The Chinese people's overall life quality leaped historically from basic subsistence to moderate prosperity, successfully propelling socialism with Chinese characteristics into the 21st century.