30. In a speech he gave last week, Deng

Xiaoping .… that Chinese economy
should be commercially competitive.
(A) has declared
(B) had declared
(C) will have declared
(D) declared

i think B

2 answers

You use the past perfect (auxiliary verb "had") only when there's another past tense in the sentence and the past perfect verb occurred before the other past tense.

The simple past works fine here. Which one is that?
I think D, the past tense, is a better choice.