China's Economy

6 Pages 1540 Words

China’s economy
The tiger still has claws!

Produced as dossier for the text production course

Table of contents

Chapter Title page

I. Introduction 3
II. The economic history of China 3
III. The political impact on the economy 4
IV. Current economic situation 4
V. Current economic problems 5
VI. Future economic problems 5
VII. The impact of the World Trade Organisation accession 6
VIII. Future Solutions 6
IX. Conclusion 7
X. Bibliography 8

I. Introduction
In the mid-19th century a Lancashire mill-owner said that “if only the Chinese could be persuaded to lengthen their shirts by a foot, the cotton mills of Lancashire would run for ever.” (Lardy, 1998, p. 14) Therein lies the lure of China, with a quarter of the world’s population surely the largest untapped market on earth.

In the 1990s, with Deng Xiaoping’s proclamation “to get rich is glorious” ringing in their ears, western corporations, politicians and businessmen flocked to China with the promise of huge returns on their investments. Completely ignoring the fact that the Chinese economy was still in the tight grip of the communist bureaucratic central planners, the West poured hundreds of billions of dollars into joint ventures which never, ultimately, bore fruit. The facts that at least 900 million of the supposed 1.3 billion Chinese “consumers-to-be” are landless peasants with little disposable income made experts pessimistic about China’s future. (Chang, 2002)

This dossier will first examine the economic history and the current situation and problems of China and will then explore whether China, with the capitalist Hu Jintao as the new leader and many economic reforms in the past, present and future, is on its way to claiming the title of the world’s next economic super power.

II. The economic history of China

„China’s success over the past two decades created a true economic miracle, the China miracle. “...