National flags are seen on Binhe avenue in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Aug. 23, 2010. The year 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

The development process of Shenzhen, an open city in south China's Guangdong province, in the past three decades displays the innovative spirit of the Chinese nation, represents a great strategic choice, and has helped to bring historic changes to China's ties with the outside world.

The three-decade development of Shenzhen city is of vital importance in getting to know China's policy of opening to the outside world and relations with other countries the world over. Without acquiring an adequate understanding of the city's strategic choice, it is hard to accurately grasp the future trend of China's external relations.

Late senior leader Deng Xiaoping, who was the architect of China's reform and opening up program, once said in Shenzhen and Shanghai, southern China, that the world had given China few opportunities but"history again offers us a real opportunity"this time. If we fail to seize this opportunity, we would unfair to our descendants and disappoint or let down our country.

The opportunity he referred to means precisely the strategic opportunity we have been talking about continuously. Shenzhen was designated as one of China's special economic zones some 30 years ago. When the international environment offered China a rare, unprecedented opportunity for development, Chinese leaders then took firm hold of it and made the first significant step forward in the reform and opening-up endeavor.

According to Deng's tentative idea, China's per-capital gross national product (GNP) will reach the level of the medium-developed countries by 2050, at which point, the Chinese people will be fairly well-off and modernization will be basically realized. To attain this goal, we must make great efforts to serve the central task of economic construction while persevering in the reform and opening up at the same time, and all this needs a relatively stable opportune time.

To date, there are only 40 years to go before 2050. How we would deal with China's relations with the world, how we would participate or get involved in the settlement of major global "hot spots" and other major issues, and all this is related closely to the issue of whether we are able to have inseparable ties with this rare strategic opportunity.

The establishment of economic zones is designed to seize the rare opportunity and conduct reform and opening-up in a voluntary manner. Deng Xiaoping's remarks during his tour of southern China in 1992 not only seized the opportunity but also advanced the reform and opening-up and create the opportunity while some others were making an attempted encirclement or looking on from behind with cold eyesight.