In his recent article on China's historical tasks at the primary stage of socialism and its foreign policy, Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledges that the socialist system in China is still immature and has a large room for improvement. It was the first time a senior Chinese leader had published such a judgment. An editorial of The Economic Observer, a leading Chinese business weekly, hails this as a major breakthrough in the guiding theory for the country's modernization drive and calls for more efforts to promote the political democracy.

When referring to China's underdevelopment at the current primary stage of socialism, Premier Wen Jiabao does not restrict the topic to such familiar economic issues as China's low per capita gross domestic product, its 20 million impoverished people and the serious imbalance in urban and rural development. He also emphasizes the underdevelopment in another area--that of "the immature socialist system."

Compared with low productivity, the underdeveloped system is a bigger obstacle to China's further development. However, when it comes to its gap with the objective of being modern, people tend to focus on the economy and productivity only, while seldom or never touching upon its existing systems in all fields. Obviously, this is not an objective posture.

The underdevelopment of the system is reflected in the poor achievement of social fairness and justice and in the limited channels to realize this, which further shows that the pace of reform in China's political system reform is lagging behind that of economic restructuring, and that the country's democratic and legal systems have yet to be improved. What kind of road should we take to move China toward being a developed country?