The China Academy of Translation has analyzed prevailing terms concerning the reform and opening-up policy and translated them into a number of foreign languages. The research institute is affiliated with the China International Publishing Group, the country's leading international publisher. In each issue,Beijing Review presents a selection of these keywords to help readers more deeply understand this program.

Household Contract Responsibility System

The household contract responsibility system which links income to output, commonly known as "an all-round contract," allowed farming households to connect with the collective economic organization. It ensured the means of production still belonged to the collective with farming operated by individual families with the principle "to each according to his work."

A creation by Chinese farmers, the system was adopted as an effective reform measure on the Chinese mainland in the early 1980s. It was a turning point in China's rural land system strategy and one outcome of its rural economic structural reform. Rural reform, with "farm output quotas fixed by household" as a basic principle, began China's campaign of internal reform.

The system was formally confirmed in the national rural work meeting minutes, a document endorsed by the Communist Party of China Central Committee in 1982. The system encouraged the productive output of individual farmers while maintaining a unified collective operation. It was applicable to both scattered small operations and relatively centralized operations of moderate scale. Rural labor productivity increased, the rural economy developed, and the standards of living for farmers improved.

Special Economic Zones

The special economic zones were the first locations in China to open to the outside world. Their dynamic economic exchanges with the rest of the world make them the premier regions of China's reform and opening up. Special economic zones were initiated by Deng Xiaoping and established in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In April 1979 the central leadership took up Deng Xiaoping's suggestion and decided to designate certain localities in Guangdong and Fujian provinces as "special export zones". These would open first by exploiting their geographical locations near Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and their close ties with overseas Chinese. In May 1980, the name "special export zones" was changed to "special economic zones," and in August the Standing Committee of the Fifth National People's Congress decided to build special economic zones in Guangdong's Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou, and Fujian's Xiamen. In April 1988, the Hainan Special Economic Zone was established, and in May 2010, Xinjiang's Khorgos and Kashgar were added to the list.

Special economic zones implement superior economic policies and management systems to develop an export-oriented economy. They are major channels for China to boost its own economy by utilizing overseas capital, technology, personnel and management expertise, and are windows on and models of China's reform and opening up.

Socialism With Chinese Characteristics Has Entered a New Era

In the early days of reform and opening up, the Party made a clarion call for us to take a path of our own and build socialism with Chinese characteristics. With decades of hard work, it has crossed the threshold and entered a new era.

This is what socialism with Chinese characteristics entering a new era means:

The Chinese nation, which at the dawn of modernization had endured so much for so long, has achieved a tremendous transformation. It has stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong; it has come to embrace the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation. It means that scientific socialism is full of vitality in 21st-century China and that the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics is now flying high and proud for all to see. It means that the path, the theory, the system, and the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics have kept developing, blazing a new trail for developing countries to achieve modernization. It offers a new option for other countries and nations that want to increase the speed of their development while preserving their independence. It offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.