Special report: 30 Years of Reform & Opening Up

    By Li Jianmin, Liang Shanggang

    JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- China's reform and opening-up policy has greatly enhanced its overall national strength, said Prof. Arnold van Zyl, vice-rector of South Africa's Stellenbosch University.

    Since the late 1970s, Prof. Van Zyl has visited China nearly 20times and lectured in more than a dozen prestigious Chinese universities.

    As a witness of the profound changes taking place in China over the past 30 years, he said reform and opening-up holds the key to China's rejuvenation.

    China has shaken off the image of being poor and backward and "turned out to be an economic giant" through three decades of reform and opening up, he told Xinhua in a recent interview.

    The huge economic strength has helped China accomplish a great number of outstanding projects such as the Three Gorges project, the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the wonderful Beijing Olympics and the successful mission of the Shenzhou-7 manned spacecraft, he said.

    Reform and opening up have given great impetus to China's development and greatly lifted China's international status, Prof. Van Zyl said.

    China is now playing an increasingly important role as a responsible member of the international community, particularly since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, he said.

    It has become a common understanding across the world that "China needs the world as well as the world needs China," he said.

    Dr. Martyn Davies, executive director of the Chinese Studies Center at Stellenbosch University, has visited China 25 times since 1986. He spoke highly of China's scientific development strategy based on strengthening self-innovation.

    "China has marched into the world's forefront in a great number of scientific researches, namely superconductor, nano-materials, paleontology and space technology," Martyn told Xinhua.

    He believed that reform and opening up has enormously emancipated the minds of the Chinese people, greatly mobilized their initiative and creativity and has rendered China great vigor for development.