--China's 30 years of reforms--

Beijing - China held a meeting on Thursday 18th Dec 2008 morning to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its reform and opening-up drive, which turned the once poverty-stricken country into one of the world's largest economies.

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Top leaders, including President Hu Jintao, attended the ceremony, which started at the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing at 10:00 a.m.

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The celebration also drew nearly 6,000 Chinese from all walks of life.

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In a speech at the ceremony, Hu said 30 years to the day witnessed the opening of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

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That meeting ushered in a new historic period of reform and opening-up, marking the most significant turning point in the Party's history since the New China was founded in 1949, he said.

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By gathering here today to commemorate the 30th anniversary of that meeting, Hu said they are meant to fully recognize the significance and great achievements of the reforms, sum up experience, and continue to develop the country on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

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Hu said China's gross domestic product(GDP) kept growing at an annual rate of 9.8 per cent for three decades, more than three times the world average.

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The President said China's GDP had soared from more than 360 billion yuan (about 52 billion U.S. dollars) in 1978 to 24950 billion yuan in 2007, making China become the world's fourth largest economy.

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The past 30 years have been a period in which China's overall national strength has risen by a big margin, and the Chinese people have received more tangible benefits than ever before, he said.

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session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which started on December 18, 1978.

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The country has carried out extensive international exchanges and cooperation, through which China's economy was boosted, he said, adding in the process, China has also made important contribution to the world's economic development.

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China's economic reforms started 30 years ago after the 10-year Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which left the country on the verge of economic breakdown.

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The decision to open up the once-secluded country and reform its moribund economy was made at the 3rd plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which started on December 18, 1978.

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The date is commonly regarded as a watershed in China's development.

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~http://chinadaily.cn/china/2008-12/18/content_7317135.htm

--Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955)--

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass–energy equivalence, expressed by the equation E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect."
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Einstein's many contributions to physics include his special theory of relativity, which reconciled mechanics with electromagnetism, and his general theory of relativity, which was intended to extend the principle of relativity to non-uniform motion and to provide a new theory of gravitation.
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His other contributions include advances in the fields of relativistic cosmology, capillary action, critical opalescence, classical problems of statistical mechanics and their application to quantum theory, an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules, atomic transition probabilities, the quantum theory of a monatomic gas, thermal properties of light with low radiation density (which laid the foundation for the photon theory), a theory of radiation including stimulated emission, the conception of a unified field theory, and the geometrization of physics.
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Einstein published over 300 scientific works and over 150 non-scientific works. In 1999 Time magazine named him the "Person of the Century". In wider culture the name "Einstein" has become synonymous with genius, and he has since been regarded as one of the most influential people in human history.
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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_einstein