BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhua) -- On December 18, 2018, attendees at a grand gathering commemorating the 40th anniversary of the launch of China's reform and opening up were all moved by a simple, heartfelt gesture by President Xi Jinping.

Xi, sitting in the first row on the rostrum at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, stood up, turned around and clapped his hands, congratulating the representatives in the back rows who were awarded for their outstanding contributions to the reform and opening up, as they were presented with flowers.

Inspired by Xi, the rest of the attendees at the ceremony gave the awardees a standing ovation.

Among the awardees was Yan Junchang, then a 77-year-old farmer from Xiaogang Village of Anhui Province, dubbed the cradle of China's rural reform. In 1978, Yan and his fellow villagers took risks in secretly signing an agreement to contract collective land to individual households.

The household contract responsibility system that was derived from Xiaogang's pioneering initiative was spread across the country in a few years and fueled farmers' enthusiasm for agricultural production.

Presenting an award to Yan at the ceremony, Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, held Yan's hand and said cordially: "Take care."

The 2018 event was the first of its kind since China established Party and state systems of awards and honors. Unlike previous awarding ceremonies, representatives of the awardees were seated on the rostrum, instead of under it.

Yan was deeply impressed by the event's unusual arrangements. "We had the household contract just to make a living, but years later we are inspired by the value the country places on us," he said.

A reformer himself, Xi is no stranger to Anhui and rural reform. In 1978, when he was studying at the prestigious Tsinghua University, Xi conducted on-site research into the province's household contract responsibility system. He filled an entire notebook with notes, and kept that notebook for many years.

In April 2016, during an inspection trip in Anhui, Xi paid a visit to Xiaogang and dropped by the former site where the villagers had signed the land-contracting agreement with their fingerprints. He said that what they did in 1978 put their lives and possessions at risk, but today it is cherished as a hallmark of China's reform.

On the same day, Xi chaired a symposium in the village, where he discussed rural reform with local officials and villagers of Xiaogang. He stressed dividing farmers' contracted land-use right into contract right and management right, a measure deemed as another major institutional innovation in rural reform.

"The remarks made by General Secretary Xi resonate with us," recalled villager Yan Jinchang, another initiator of the household contracts who participated in that symposium.

Over the years, Xi has made an array of remarks emphasizing the importance of reform and opening up. "Socialism cannot make progress without reform and opening up," Xi said at a meeting in 1987, when serving as vice mayor of Xiamen, a special economic zone in east China's Fujian Province.

After assuming the Party's top post in 2012, Xi conducted his first domestic inspection in Guangdong, a province at the forefront of the country's reform and opening up. He laid a flower basket beneath the bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping, chief architect of China's reform and opening-up, in a park in Shenzhen, declaring a firm commitment to reform: "Reform will not stop, and opening-up will not cease!"

At the 2018 gathering in Beijing, Xi said that reform and opening up is "a path that must be taken to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics."

He has matched his words with actions, placing great weight on reform throughout his political career. Among his numerous reform initiatives is the one concerning collective forest tenure. He led this reform after he became the governor of Fujian. This initiative was later expanded nationwide and is known as another revolutionary step for China's rural areas after the household contract responsibility system.

The third plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee, convened in 2013 under Xi's leadership, ushered in an era of comprehensively deepening reform. Over the past decade, more than 2,000 reform measures have been implemented, enabling the country to eliminate extreme poverty, promote integrated urban-rural development, fight corruption, support businesses, boost innovation, and push forward a "green revolution."

Under the leadership of Xi, China has also become increasingly integrated with the rest of the world by making tenacious efforts to push for high-level institutional opening up, including the launch of negative lists for foreign investment and the promulgation of the Foreign Investment Law.

Thanks to these measures, tremendous changes have taken place across the country. Take Xiaogang for instance. In 2023, the village's collective economic income reached 14.2 million yuan (about 2 million U.S. dollars). Villagers' per capita disposable income rose from 10,200 yuan in 2012 to 34,900 yuan in 2023.

In retrospect, Yan Junchang said that for him, the life he is living today is beyond his wildest dreams. "This fully proves that the reform and opening up policy is the right way forward."