The Communist Party of China successfully led the national revolution to establish the People's Republic of China in 1949. But at that time they faced the enormous task of rebuilding the battered economy and raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Our reporter Guan Xin takes a closer look at China's reform and the process of opening up the country, a miracle that has made China the world's second largest economy in just 30 years.

From a planned economy to a socialist market economy.

This is the fundamental change China has experienced during the past 30 years. The reforms have raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in December 1978, decided to shift the focus of the Party's work to socialist modernization, economic reforms and opening up to the outside world.

On June 8th 1979, a single blast marks the beginning of Shenzhen's transformation from a fishing village, into the frontier of China's reform and opening-up policy.

The speedy construction of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone represents something of a miracle. During the early period, every Shenzhen resident worked under the famous slogan, "Time is money and efficiency is life."

According to Yuan Yiming, Professor at Shenzhen University, a lot of new initiatives of the market had been introduced on a trial basis, that have contributed to liberalizing the economy.

Today's Shenzhen has been closely linked with the outside world. Everyday, people travel through the Futian port. For many of them, commuting between Shenzhen and Hong Kong is just a part of daily life.

Since 1978, Shenzhen has maintained an annual growth rate of 27 percent. It also cultivated many big private enterprises, like Ping An Insurance Company, and China Merchants Bank. Shenzhen's success gave a further push to continue reforms and opening up. China's special economic zone has experimented with different models, and is now moving from coastal to inland cities.

The Communist Party of China's grand experiment with the socialist market economy has kicked off the economic miracle that deeply changed China's face in the past 3 decades.

(CNTV July 1, 2011)