Cuban journalists praise successful Chinese economy

HAVANA, Oct. 23 (Chinese media) -- The economic growth and technological advances China has achieved in the 30 years of reform and opening-up are remarkable, said Cuban journalists Thursday.

China has become a "model" showcasing the success of "development and stability" as the world is increasingly gripped by the financial crisis, they said.

China's GDP accounted for only 1 percent of the world economy when the country started its reform and opening-up in 1978, and now the figure has surged to 5 percent, they said.

The remarkable achievement has proved "the importance and correctness" of the policy, they told Chinese media.

"The well-disciplined, excellently-organized and hardworking" Chinese people have turned the country's capital Beijing into a metropolitan, said Raiko Martin, reporter of Cuba's second largest newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

Tradition and modernity co-exist in that changing and "energetic" city, said Martin, who was in Beijing in August to cover the 2008 Olympics.

Beijing has managed to retain its "characteristics" in the process of rapid economic development, said Tambien Joel Garcia from the weekly Trabajadores.

All the achievements have resulted from the reform and opening-up policies, which have boosted China's national strength and enabled better lives for its people, said the Cuban journalists.

The policies also brought "historic changes" to China's relations with the rest of the world. With its ties expanded and enhanced, China has also injected new vitality into the world economy, said Para Eduardo Regalado, a researcher at the Center ofAsia and Oceania Studies.