Hu Jintao: Deng's achievements continue to influence China

From a speech by the Chinese President at a ceremony in Beijing to mark the centenary of Deng Xiaoping's birth

Comrade Deng Xiaoping was a great man of the world whose remarkable achievements and scientific theories will, as they already have done, continue to change and influence China and the world at large.

Comrade Deng Xiaoping was a great man of the world whose remarkable achievements and scientific theories will, as they already have done, continue to change and influence China and the world at large.

Deng called on the nation to concentrate on development, and allow some regions and people to get rich first so they could help others for common prosperity, saying that planning and the market are only the means of economic development rather than the symbols of socialism and capitalism.

Deng Xiaoping's blueprint for modernisation is gradually being turned into wonderful reality. The goals for the first-step and second-step development have been fulfilled. We are marching toward the third-step strategic goal with full confidence.

Great progress has been made in the reunification of the motherland, over which Deng showed great concern, as Hong Kong and Macao have returned to the motherland and maintained prosperity and stability, and we are working for the final settlement of the Taiwan issue.

We are ready to strive for the prospects of peaceful reunification with our utmost sincerity and utmost efforts, but we are also fully determined and capable of smashing any scheme to separate Taiwan from China.

Efforts must be made to develop socialist democracy, improve the socialist legal system, build a socialist country under a rule of law, and ensure the people exercise the right to democratic election, democratic policy-making, democratic administration and democratic supervision according to the law.