From CRI English, via Xinhua:
Ten years ago when Zhang Wenrong learnt of the death of Deng Xiaoping, he broke down in tears, just like thousands of farmers who had ploughed their life savings into growing businesses in China’s flourishing financial hub of Shanghai.
“Everyone in my family cried. We benefited most from Deng’s reform and opening-up policy,” recalled Zhang, who moved to Shanghai from a village in Wenzhou City, east China’s Zhejiang Province, to try his luck after failing the college entrance exam in 1986.
“Things became uncertain and I was not sure whether I could continue my business after losing the chief architect of China’s reform,” he said.
Zhang, now board chairman of Shanghai Yalong Investment Co. Ltd., owns a company with thousands of employees and 4 billion yuan (526.3 million U.S. dollars) in assets, and attributes his success to the central government’s adherence to Deng’s policies.
China has witnessed its most rapid development in the last ten years as a result of creatively carrying forward Deng’s legacy, analysts say. [Full text]
