In 2002-2003, China continued its dramatic economic and social progress while facing various challenges, including uncertainties in world political and economic situations. Problems at home included high employment pressure, an increasing gap between farmers' income and that between urban and rural residents as well as various new social problems brought on by the very prosperity that China now enjoys, such as environmental pollution related to urbanization. However, in general, people in China in 2002-2003 had much to celebrate, including the election in March 2003 of a new president, Hu Jintao. President Hu, 60, follows the 10-year tenure of outgoing-president Jiang Zemin, 76, who led the nation into a remarkable era of progress and prosperity following the death of Deng Xiaoping, one of the older generation of leaders of the PRC who is credited with initiating China's policies of reform and opening-up leading into the 21st century.

Top News Stories

In his first address to the National People' s Congress, the highest agency of state power in China, President Hu Jintao promised to continue the work of his predecessors at a time when China's development is at a new historical starting point. Preceding the March 2003 election of a new president by the NPC was a meeting of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2002, a historic week-long event as the top domestic story of 2002 by both the editors of China Daily, the English-language newspaper published in Beijing, and the editors of Xinhua News Agency, China's state news agency. In a smooth transition of Party leadership, Hu Jintao was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and eight other new members - Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju, Wu Guanzheng, Li Changchun and Luo Gan - elected onto the Central Politburo's Standing Committee. China Daily and Xinhua agreed that the second top story was the nation's continued buoyant economic growth in its first year following its membership in the World Trade Organization. In 2002, the gross domestic product (GDP) reached 10.2 trillion yuan, an increase of 8 percent over 2001 at comparable prices.

Other news stories making either Xinhua or China Daily top 10 news stories of 2002 lists: 

Shanghai's winning the bid to host World Expo 2010, the first 
time the world's fair will be held in a developing country.

High-level exchanges of visits between China and the United States leading to significant improvement in relations between the two countries during the year 2002.  President Jiang Zemin and US President George W. Bush met three times starting in October 2001, and the visit of then Vice-President and now President Hu Jintao to the United States in April 2002 was also crowned a success.

China's foreign trade topping 600 billion US dollars, moving China to fifth position from sixth on the list of the world's major foreign trade powers. The influx of foreign direct investment into China reached a record 50 billion US dollars, ranking it first in the world as the biggest recipient of overseas investment.

The beginning of the eastern section of the "project to divert water from the south to the north," the launching of the "project to transmit natural gas from the west to the east," and the damming of the man-made diversion canal of the Three Gorges Project.

The State Council's formally ending in June 2002 its year-long campaign of selling down of massive state holdings in listed companies through the domestic stock market. The program, which started a year earlier to raise funds for social security, had triggered heavy selling in the market due to problems of overpricing and fears of rapid market expansion.

China's intensified efforts to codify its civil code, one of the country's three basic laws. A draft civil code was submitted for deliberation for the first time to the NPC Standing Committee.

Damage done to cross-Straits ties by remarks made on August 3, 2002 by Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian. In a speech to the pro-independence World Federation of Taiwanese Associations in Tokyo via teleconferencing, Chen proclaimed that "each side (of the Taiwan Straits) is a country" and backed legislation on a referendum on the island's future and destiny. The cross-Straits relationship plunged to a new low as the mainland warned against Chen's pro-independence overture.

Two deadly airliner crashes within a month of each other: A Boeing 767 passenger jet from China's flagship airline, Air China, plunged into a fog-shrouded mountain in Busan, Republic of Korea, on April 15, 2002, and on May 7, a China Northern Airlines MD-82 airliner carrying 103 passengers on a flight from Beijing to Dalian in northeast China's Liaoning Province went down over the sea.

The deaths of 42 people in Tangshan, a small town close to Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, after eating food at a snack bar on September 14, 2002 laced with rat poison. Hundreds of others were left seriously ill. A man named Chen Zhengping later admitted the crime, saying he had added poison to flour used by a competitor who had taken his business. The man was sentenced to death by a local court in late September and executed  on October 14.

The dual gold-winning performance from speed skater Yang Yang at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics brought home to China the nation's first gold medals in Winter Olympic history. Yang won the 500- and 1,000-m short-track speed skating titles.