BEIJING -- This July, NASA's Atlantis space shuttle will make its final journey into space, marking the end of three decades of NASA space flights. On the other side of the planet, another milestone will take place: the 90th anniversary of founding of the 80-million-strong Communist Party of China (CPC).
However, the CPC's future ambitions are much more complicated than simply sending a man into space. The Party plans to lead the world's second-largest economy through a massive strategic transformation in order to build China into an "ideal society."
Ninety years ago, the CPC began to revive the nation by conveying new and innovative ideas to every cell of society. For the country's economic cells - its companies and enterprises - transformation is necessary for survival, according to eastern China entrepreneur Zhou Jiang.
Zhou is the president of Fasten, a company that produces metal products. Due to its outstanding achievements in technological innovation, Fasten has become the only "State First Grade Enterprise" in China's metal products industry.
"I would work 400 days a year if I could. Raising our workers' income and promoting innovation both require our input. We have to fight the clock to run our business better and turn the government's ideas into reality," he said.
According to the government's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), China will accelerate the transformation of its economic growth pattern by focusing on scientific development, innovation and domestic demand. The plan is considered to be a major step in promoting China's latest round of development.
The first round happened about three decades ago, when the CPC seized the opportunity to reorganize its resources and abandon its previous focus on class struggles. The world's most populous country promptly transformed into the world's largest factory, with its economy expanding accordingly.
However, the country's transformation could be said to have begun as early as 1956, when the late Mao Zedong, the CPC's first chairman, said in his essay "On the Ten Major Relationships" that all forces, whether direct or indirect, should be mobilized to make China a powerful country.
In the same year, the CPC convened its eighth National Congress, decreeing that the country's chief task would be to concentrate on developing its productive forces.
These policies brought about economic recovery and the improvement of people's livelihoods. However, as time went on, the policies became less effective, and China missed the chance to truly change its development path.
This setback did not stop the CPC. In changing the nation's economy from a highly centralized planned economy to a robust socialist market economy in the 1980s, the CPC blazed a trail that suited the interests of the entire nation. The Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, both coastal regions in China, enjoyed explosive growth during this time.
