The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC honors China?s crucial choice in 1978 toward implementing reform and opening up policies. Since that historic date the country has experienced unprecedented changes.

2008 is China’s 30th anniversary of the reform and opening up. Looking back upon the past 30 years clearly reveals that great achievements have been made in many areas, with China?s economy resting foremost in everyone?s eyes. But significantly, the Chinese people have emancipated their minds and updated their ideas as well. Chinese reforms have deepened gradually, with reforms complementing the opening-up policies.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary, our site will offer articles featuring both nostalgic and in-depth analysis covering the reforms and opening-up, with all of them geared toward learning from the past and understanding China?s future.

Chinese reform has been rocky at times because the nature of reform always requires readjustments in the laws of social development. Old ideas and systems have been abolished and new ones established. At times citizens have criticized the reforms, especially when the process did not move forward smoothly. But the vast majority feels, after prolonged ideological discussions, that China should stick to its reforms: they have brought benefits and happiness to the masses, as well as confidence and hope. Ultimately practice is always the sole criterion for testing truth.

As Chinese economic systems continue to evolve many changes have also been enacted in our societal structure. Unresolved problems and contradictions unfortunately have also appeared with reforms going in depth. China must face and address such issues and problems in order to achieve modernization. How will our leaders overcome this developmental bottleneck? The answers may lie in reviewing and summarizing the past.

Thirty years of reform and opening up to the outside world have brought about freedom and diversity as well as new challenges to China, a Dutch Sinologist told Xinhua in a recent interview.

“The changes in the past 30 years in such a vast country with such a huge population are truly unprecedented in the world,” said Maghiel van Crevel in fluent Mandarin.

Van Crevel, dean of the Sinologist Institute at Leiden University of the Netherlands, has witnessed the dramatic changes in the past 20 years in China.

He studied Chinese at China’s prestigious Peking University between 1986 and 1987, and has been visiting China on a regular basis since then, giving lectures and doing research in China.

The culture shock he got upon his first arrival in Beijing was the shortage of almost everything, he recalled. Van Crevel had to share a poorly equipped dorm with several other international students, at the sacrifice of privacy, which he had enjoyed in the Netherlands.

The whole building had one telephone, so the concierge had to shout each time to get the attention of the person wanted on the phone, he recalled with a smile.

“As a matter of fact, the international students had much better housing conditions than the Chinese students. I also visited homes of several Chinese friends. Their housing conditions were even poorer — one could barely turn around in the kitchen.”

Living conditions in China have improved vastly since then, he said.

Van Crevel also saw tremendous changes in people’s attitudes. In the 1980s, Chinese universities did not seem to be encouraging contacts between Chinese and international students, he said.

He felt very uncomfortable with the many restrictions, including a ban on lodging outside the campus. “Now the situation is completely different. Chinese and international students can exchange their ideas freely and the students are allowed to find accommodation elsewhere.”

Van Crevel, who has been visiting China on an annual basis in recent years, said he now feels quite at ease in China, which was not the case in the past.

He said the academic circles in China are pretty open now. “All sorts of ideas are allowed and I can feel the atmosphere of free debate on the Internet,” said the Chinese language and literature professor.

Back in 1986, his debate in class with the lecturer was seen as a serious “incident” by the university, he said. But today, heated debates are commonplace in classrooms of Chinese colleges, he said.

Van Crevel noted that there have been profound changes in ethics in China. For example, generation gaps in the 1950s and 1960s were far less evident than in the 1980s and 1990s, he said. The changes are a manifestation of the diversification of social values. However, it is difficult to determine whether these changes are positive or not, he said.

“People in the past tended to pay more attention to ethics. As a result, social injustice was less a problem than today. Now in restaurants, it is common to see guests shouting at young waitresses, obviously in belief that they are superior.”

Reform and opening up have brought about progress, but also a wider wealth gap and social injustice, he said.

In addition, China faces new challenges in terms of social welfares, environment and social order. “When I was at Peking University, people even didn’t have to lock up their bikes when they were parking them. Today, it is a different story.”

As a Sinologist, Van Crevel feels there is an increasing interest in China by outsiders. In 1986, Peking University had about 400 international students. Now, the number has risen to 3,000. At Leiden, one of the first European universities to teach the Chinese language, 140 students applied for the course in 2007, a record number.

Despite the increase of interest in China, ordinary Dutch people still know little about the country, he said. “I hope more and more Dutch people will pay attention to China and that my faculty will have more and more students,” said Van Crevel.

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Customer cards and loyalty bonus programs have become common among retailers.? On one hand, customers are bound by granted bonuses, and on the other hand, retailers gain enormous amounts of data about customer histories.? Re-occurring patterns in customer behaviour enables predictions of the customers? behaviours and of their interests.? However, these enormous amounts of data make a manual use of the data infeasible.? The solution is RapidMiner, the leading open-source data mining software.? RapidMiner finds previously unknown useful patterns in the customer transaction data.? In contrast to classical hypothesis- or query-based data analysis tools, the user does not need to know in advance, what exactly he is looking for.? Instead, RapidMiner leads the user to the relevant information.? The analysis of the customer transactions provides insights into the customers? behaviours and allowing to predict their buying decisions and to increase sales and profits by recognizing and utilizing up- and cross-selling potentials.? In an up-sell, a customer buys a higher-valued product or service than originally planned.? An insurance company may for example sell to a customer not only the requested basic car insurance, but possibly upgrade it to include additional features with an extra price tag on them like included insurance coverage for rental cars in foreign countries, if the customer likes to travel.? The customers thereby receives a higher-valued product better tailored to his needs, while at the same time the insurance company achieves a higher profit margin with that customer.? So, at the end, both are more satisfied thanks to the merits of data mining.? In a cross-sell, a customer buys further products in addition to the product he originally planned to buy.? In order to achieve this, online retailers recommend related products to the one currently selected, e.g. products other customers bought together with the product at hand.? An insurance company may for example offer a life insurance in addition to the requested car insurance, if the customer asks for a quote for an insurance for his family car.? If done well and matching the customers life situation, context, interests, and desires, this leads to significantly increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.? Using intelligent market basket analysis and mining customer histories, RapidMiner enables both retailers and sales departments to identify and appropriately leverage such up- and cross-selling potentials.? Training courses and services provided by Rapid-I, the company offering this powerful open source data mining software free of license fees to end-users, help companies to get started quickly with RapidMiner and with boosting their businesses.

WASHINGTON: The international community should strengthen cooperation to maintain global economic stability, a senior Chinese financial official said on Sunday.

Li Yong, vice-minister of finance, also urged developed countries to adopt responsible policies for world macro stability.

“The international community should jointly strive for world economic stability,” he said in a statement at the 78th Development Committee of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

“The policy responses should not only effectively address the present crisis, but also take into account long-term interests, as well as their impact on the international macro environment,” he noted.

Major developed countries should maintain the stability of the value of international reserve currencies and ease global inflationary pressures, Li said.

The international community should also be vigilant against possible deflation caused by a slowdown of the global economy, he added.

Meanwhile, developing countries’ efforts to maintain stable growth should be supported by the international community, Li said, adding that developing countries are “a strong force in global efforts to contain a worldwide recession”.

The economic stability and social security of the developing world is an important part of the solution to the present crisis, and is vital for achieving long-term growth and development of the global economy, Li said.

The World Bank Development Committee was established in 1974 to advise the boards of governors of the bank and the fund on critical development issues and on the financial resources required to promote economic development in developing countries. The committee usually meets twice a year.

A senior Chinese official said on Monday that China will continue to cooperate with other countries to cope with the current financial crisis.

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“For the international community, the most urgent task is to join efforts to stem further deterioration and spread of the crisis — the major threat to global growth — and restore global economic and financial stability,” said Yi Gang, vice governor of the People’s Bank of China.

“China will continue to strengthen its cooperation with concerned countries and hopes that all governments will work together to overcome the current difficulties and restore international financial stability,” he said in a statement at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

He urged the two Bretton Woods Institutions to “fulfill their mandates to maintain global monetary and financial stability and facilitate sustainable, balanced growth.”

The fund should give the surveillance priority to the ongoing financial turmoil, deepen its analysis, learn lessons, and listen to the opinions of member countries, said the senior official of China’s central bank.

“From the medium- and long-term perspective, the fund must address the inherent deficiencies of the current international monetary system and foster an international financial architecture adaptive to the evolving global economy and financial markets,” he noted.

As the largest multilateral development institution, the World Bank should re-assess the challenges confronting the developing countries — soaring food and fuel prices, higher financing costs, deteriorating balance of payments positions, and mounting inflationary pressures, said Yi Gang.

“With the advantages of its financing capacity and expertise, the World Bank should urge the developed countries to shoulder their due responsibilities in stabilizing the global economy through targeted measures, carried out in an even-handed and professional fashion,” he said.

Yi Gang also stressed the fundamentals of the Chinese economy are “solid and resilient.”

“We are confident we can weather the financial turmoil,” he said. “With the global economic slowdown, it is important that China maintains its stable and relatively rapid growth.”