October.08 (China Military News cited from UPI) -- Sixty years ago when Mao Zedong ushered the birth of the People's Republic of China under Communist rule, the Great Helmsman's message was: "The Chinese people have stood up."

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Last week's dazzling celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of that Oct. 1, 1949, event in Beijing's Tiananmen Square reaffirmed Mao's proclamation words.

"Today, a socialist China geared to modernization, the world and the future has stood rock-firm in the East of the world," Chinese President Hu Jintao said in his remarks at the celebrations.

For a sampling of where China has arrived since 1949, consider:

The number of those holding jobs has increased from 207 million in 1952 to 775 million in 2008.

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Since 1978, which marks the true start of China's reform and rise under Deng Xiaoping and not so much under Mao, the average number of newly employed people annually has topped 12 million.

China's 1950 annual fiscal revenue totaled 6.2 billion yuan. In 2008, it was 6.13 trillion yuan ($899 billion), or a jump of more than 1,000 times.

In the "30 years of reform and opening-up," as the period from 1978-2007 is designated, China's GDP grew at an annual rate of 9.8 percent. Currently, China is the world's third-largest economic power after the United States and Japan.

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China's emergence has helped its global trade and trade surpluses to skyrocket, in turn, making it the world's largest holder of foreign exchange reserves of more than $2 trillion and the largest creditor to the United States. The reserves are driving China's massive investments overseas to feed its gargantuan appetite for raw materials and energy.

As China's economic might grows, ominous calls from some of its experts to replace the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency also are growing.

China's growth of nuclear and military power, which was in much evidence at the 60th celebrations parade, has not lagged behind its economic growth. The display of its military might included various intercontinental-range missiles, all indigenously made.

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It is no wonder then China's military strength has become a major source of concern, especially to its string of neighbors, some of whom have border and territorial disputes with it. Lest it be forgotten, it was Mao who said political power "grows out of the barrel of a gun."

But an editorial in Japan's Asahi Shimbun noted modern China is showing a willingness to fulfill its responsibility as a major power under Hu.

Hu is also keen to strengthen bilateral ties with the United States, which will be reinforced when U.S. President Barack Obama visits China next month.

So, how much credit can Mao take for these incredible achievements, notwithstanding the fact it was during his leadership that tens of millions died in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution disasters?

"What has succeeded is not China under Mao, but China after its break with almost everything his revolution stood for: rigid state control of the economy, centralization, a crazed egalitarianism, closed borders, a party that enforced its rule by a personality cult and relentless, bloody repression," writes author and former British diplomat George Walden in Britain's Daily Telegraph.

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China's achievements, however, cannot detract from some of its serious domestic problems including continuing abuse of official authority, corruption, repression and ethnic and minority strife as seen in Tibet and the Xinjiang-Uighur region.

"What China should make clear to audiences both at home and abroad is that it is governed by the rule of law and seeks to create a harmonious society where people are valued," the Asahi Shimbun editorial said.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, John Lee, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, said: "While the Chinese state is rich and the party powerful, civil society is weak and the vast majority of people remain poor."

To be sure, Walden says in today's China there is more personal freedom and the beginning of a genuine system of law.

So on its Happy 60th, China can take immense pride in what former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger described as its "unbelievable accomplishments." Speaking to Xinhua, Kissinger, who helped normalize U.S.-China relations, said China's transformation is an "extraordinary historic event."