China this week celebrates the 50 years of the People's Republic. Of course, it is not celebrating all of those years: The Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, and the Great Cultural Revolution, the decade of terror that turned the country upside down, will be passed over in silence.
Instead, the nation will commemorate Mao Zedong's declaration of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949, Deng Xiaoping's market reforms that ushered in an age of unprecedented prosperity and the international status that has followed in their wake. Even with the blank spots of the last half-century, China has much to applaud.
Unfortunately, the celebrations will soon end, and then the Chinese Communist Party will have to turn its attention to the future. Indeed, the progress that has been made in the last two decades only reveals how much more there is to be done.