The Kazakh and Uzbek presidents have separately sent messages to their Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to pay homage to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

In the messages, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov highly valued Deng's great achievements, saying that China owed its rapid development over the past 20 years to Deng's political wisdom.

Both highly commended Deng's creation of the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics combining the maintenance of political stability with the development of a market economy in China, paving the way for China's steady development.

Deng, the architect of China's policy of reform and opening to the outside world, was born in Guang'an County in southwest China's Sichuan Province on August 22, 1904. He died in February 1997 at the age of 93.

(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2004)