China continues its transformation
Wed, October 15 2008
Zhai Zhigang emerged Sept. 27 from the Shenzhou-7 spacecraft and walked in space for about 20 minutes, as seen in a live telecast.
The Shenzhou-7 story is just one event in China’s extraordinary transformation from a semi-closed, highly centralized society to one gradually opening up to the world.
The journey of reform and opening-up in the late 1970s was initiated by late leader Deng Xiaoping as well as other senior leaders who gathered for the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1978.
In December 1978, 18 farmers in Xiaogang village, in east China’s Anhui province, signed a secret agreement to divide community-owned farmland into pieces for household contract.
The move was supported by Deng and recognized by the government, initiating the system of contracted responsibilities based on the household in rural areas.
On July 15, 1979, the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council changed policies regarding foreign economic activities to make them more flexible. Special economic zones were also set up in the cities of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen.
The development of special economic zones and opening-up zones prompted the creation of a group of regional economic growth centres.
During his tour to south China in 1992, Deng set about defining socialism as the pursuit of common prosperity.
“Practice of a planned economy is not equivalent to socialism because there is also planning under capitalism. Practice of a market economy is not equivalent to capitalism because there are also markets under socialism,” said Deng in one of his most repeated quotes.
Experts believe Deng’s simple but penetrating paradox paved the way for China’s switch from a planned economy to a market economy.
That economy has grown rapidly as a result of foreign trade. In 1996, China’s total foreign trade volume accounted for 35.5 per cent of its GDP. Now, it accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the GDP.
Twenty-three years after the launch of the opening-up policy and 52 years after the founding of the communist rule, China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, becoming its 143rd member.
“Thirty years of reform and opening up have brought about historic changes in China’s development – the planned economic system has been smashed gradually and a market economic system has basically shaped up, creating a rocketing economy that is now the fourth largest in the world,” said Chi Fulin, executive president of the China Institute for Reform and Development.
From 1978 to 2007, China’s GDP grew by 9.6 per cent annually from $216.5 billion to $3.6 trillion. Fiscal revenue grew over 44-fold.
-Xinhua
By Wu Qi
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