Guangdong residents have been expressing gratitude and respect for the province’s late former leader Xi Zhongxun by holding various commemorative activities ahead of the 100th anniversary of Xi’s birth, which falls today.

    Xi, father of China’s Party chief and President Xi Jinping, spent the last 12 years of his life — from 1990 to 2002 — in Shenzhen, which he called his “second home.”

    “Without his vision and full support, Shenzhen couldn’t have achieved what it has today,” said Shenzhen Party chief Wang Rong.

    Xi Zhongxun was a leading political figure whose revolutionary pedigree can be traced to the 1930s, when he helped establish communist guerilla bases in the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu. As with many revolutionary leaders, Xi fell in and out of favor with the Party. In 1962, internal Party struggles saw him purged from all positions. He wasn’t reinstated until 1978.

    That year, he moved to Guangdong, where he helped establish his crowning achievement: the country’s pioneering special economic zones, including Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies)