SINGAPORE — The approaching close of 2008 should remind us of the day 30 years ago that marked the onset of a chain of events that was to alter the course of Asian — and human — history.

In December 1978, the Chinese Communist Party endorsed the opening up of Chinese agriculture to private, small-scale farming, a radical departure from Mao Zedong's policy of communized agriculture. The capital surpluses accumulated by agricultural privatization helped finance the buildup of urban areas, especially on the eastern coast, which eventually widened the gap between the dynamic coastal areas and the backward interior, between the urban and the rural, and between the rich and the poor.

In any case, the fundamental turnaround in economic policy led to the surge of the Chinese economy, its linkage to the international economy, the modernization of China's industry and financial system, the strengthening of the country's military capacity, and the expansion of its international influence. More importantly, the new policies resulted in the most massive reduction of poverty within the shortest period of time in mankind's history — from 800 million to 100 million people living on $1 to $2 a day.