New CPC leadership's first 100 ruling days inspiring(9)

CHALLENGES & EXPECTATIONS

Despite a widely acknowledged good start, there are challenges and expectations ahead.

Chinese industrial companies' profits rose a mere 5.3 percent in 2012, compared with the 25.4-percent surge registered in 2011, posting its weakest growth in 13 years, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The country's reliance on imported petroleum broke records. And an unreasonable economic structure is emerging as a prominent problem which hinders China's future development.

With cities around the country choking in air pollution, China is also encountering increasing ecological and environmental problems.

Widening income disparities, corruption, abuses of power, food safety scandals keep triggering public outcries.

Issues concerning the Diaoyu Islands, nuclear tests by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Sino-U.S. ties also test the new leaders' wisdom in diplomacy.

All these challenges serve to remind CPC leaders to be soberly aware that China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will long remain so.

This basic condition of China has not changed; nor has the principal problem in national society, that is, how can China meet the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people with backward social production; nor has China's international position as the largest developing country in the world.