economy-of-china

"In China, they started on limited economic reform first but it was beginning to succeed in producing more goods for the people—on a limited scale certainly, but it was beginning to succeed. You cannot get economic reform really going well and with a future unless you get political liberty. That was what they found. We have always known it. Here, I think it was perhaps the wiser way to start: to start with the political reform, the thorough discussion. After all, new ideas come out of discussion and free interplay of ideas and discussion between one and the other. The glasnost as it is called, has gone very far very quickly, far further, far faster than we thought and I think that plus the communication of the ideas will in the end lead to much greater prosperity. I think the point that I have to make again is that although the politicians at the top—led by Mr. Gorbachev—could bring about the glasnost, it requires the practical and willing cooperation of the people to enlarge their responsibility and their activity to bring success in economic reform. I believe that will come about. I believe that the changes—the glasnost—really have become permanent because they have gone so much further than anything we thought and they have given a so much better atmosphere and less tension—the fear seems to have gone—and so I believe that perestroika is now set upon its course and that it will go through to success."

"Socialism was blended with a free-market economy and agricultural collectives were disbanded, allowing peasants to profit from the portion of their production that was designated as surplus."

"Ideas of ‘market socialism’ – for example, in the USSR in the 1920s, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hungary in the 1970s – had never proposed a system with the capitalist sector outgrowing the parts of the economy owned by the state. Chinese leaders from Deng Xiaoping onwards asserted that they were developing a ‘communism with Chinese characteristics’. The red-dyed gauze no longer occluded reality. The communist order was retained only as a means of rigorous political and ideological control; its economic and social components were blown to the winds. Concepts of Mao Zedong Thought were abandoned except insofar as they promoted the goals of national identity, centralised administration and superpower status. An extraordinary hybrid was created. China had become the only communist state which developed a vibrant economy by giving it over to capitalism."

"The reforms also paved the way for things like China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — an ambitious infrastructural push aimed at expanding China's political and economic influence internationally — and set the stage for the emergence of e-commerce and technology giants like Alibaba and Huawei."

"Beginning in the late 1970s, China overcame centuries of stagnation precisely because Mao’s successors understood that they had to decentralise the People’s Republic, giving economic if not political power to the people. If western commentators are right, Xi Jinping wants to go in the opposite direction. If the Chinese are lucky, he will turn out to be an enlightened absolutist, like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. If they are unlucky, he will be just another emperor who fondly dreamt of controlling a fifth of humanity."

"It came shortly after Mao's death in September of that year, and by the end of 1978 Deng had outmaneuvered all of his rivals to become China's "paramount" leader. He had already by then turned the tables on his predecessor by claiming that Mao had been right seventy percent of the time and wrong thirty percent: this now became party doctrine. Among the "right" things Mao had done were reviving China as a great power, maintaining the Communist Party's political monopoly, and opening relations with the United States as a way of countering the Soviet Union. Among the "wrong" things was Mao's embrace of a disastrously administered command economy. With this pronouncement on percentages, Deng won himself room to pursue a very different path. It involved experimenting with markets at local and regional levels, after which Deng would declare whatever worked to be consistent with Marxist-Leninist principles. Through this bottom-up approach, he showed that a communist party could significantly, even radically, improve the lives of the people it ruled—but only by embracing capitalism. Per capita income tripled in China between 1978 and 1994. Gross domestic product quadrupled. Exports expanded by a factor of ten. And by the time of Deng's death in 1997, the Chinese economy had become one of the largest in the world. The contrast with the moribund Soviet economy, which despite high oil prices showed no growth at all in the 1970s and actually contracted during the early 1980s, was an indictment from which Soviet leaders never recovered. "After all," the recently deposed Mikhail Gorbachev commented ruefully in 1993, "China today is capable of feeding its people who number more than one billion.""

"But democracies also took root because they generally outperformed autocracies in raising living standards. Markets do not always require democracy in order to function: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China all developed successful economies under less than democratic conditions. The Cold War experience showed, though, that it is not easy to keep markets open and ideas constrained at the same time. And since markets proved more efficient than command economies in allocating resources and enhancing productivity, the resulting improvement in people s lives, in turn, strengthened democracies."

"From agrarian economy to global superpower in half a century—China’s transformation has been an economic success story unlike any other. Today, China is the world’s second largest economy, making up 16% of $86 trillion global GDP in nominal terms."

"In 1978, after years of state control of all productive assets, the government of China embarked on a major program of economic reform. In an effort to awaken a dormant economic giant, it encouraged the formation of rural enterprises and private businesses, liberalized foreign trade and investment, relaxed state control over some prices, and invested in industrial production and the education of its workforce. By nearly all accounts, the strategy has worked spectacularly. While pre-1978 China had seen annual growth of 6 percent a year (with some painful ups and downs along the way), post-1978 China saw average real growth of more than 9 percent a year with fewer and less painful ups and downs. In several peak years, the economy grew more than 13 percent. Per capita income has nearly quadrupled in the last 15 years, and a few analysts are even predicting that the Chinese economy will be larger than that of the United States in about 20 years. Such growth compares very favorably to that of the "Asian tigers"--Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan Province of China--which, as a group, had an average growth rate of 7-8 percent over the last 15 years. Curious about why China has done so well, an IMF research team recently examined the sources of that nation's growth and arrived at a surprising conclusion. Although capital accumulation--the growth in the country's stock of capital assets, such as new factories, manufacturing machinery, and communications systems--was important, as were the number of Chinese workers, a sharp, sustained increase in productivity (that is, increased worker efficiency) was the driving force behind the economic boom. During 1979-94 productivity gains accounted for more than 42 percent of China's growth and by the early 1990s had overtaken capital as the most significant source of that growth. This marks a departure from the traditional view of development in which capital investment takes the lead. This jump in productivity originated in the economic reforms begun in 1978."

"On Dec. 13, 1978, at the close of a Communist Party gathering that lasted over a month, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping delivered a speech that laid out a pragmatic vision for China’s future. It was a country that was then not long out of the grip of the chaos and terror of the Cultural Revolution. He proposed that China learn from the example of other, richer countries, allow workers and peasants to “vie” to get ahead so those with a better standard of life would inspire others to work harder, and proposed that provinces and enterprises be given the power to make decisions or try new things.[...] In 1981, just three years after Deng’s reform project was launched, almost 90% of Chinese people lived in extreme poverty by the definition of the World Bank. By 2013, that number had dropped to less than 2%."

"After 40 years of development, China has become the world’s second largest economy. The contribution from China to the global GDP has increased from 2.4 to 14.8%, the per capita GDP from 380 to 54,000 CNY, the per capita disposable income from 170 to 24,000 CNY, and the outward foreign direct investment from 297 to 1,235,925 million CNY."

"The opening up policy has enabled China to learn from other countries, either developed or developing. To strengthen its own capabilities, China has expanded research capacity, emphasized advanced management and increased infrastructure development. China has entered a new stage of development, with growth rate of domestic investment on infrastructure development decreasing and rapidly increasing foreign investment. China has also expanded its foreign direct investment through such international programs as the “Belt and Road Initiative” to promote economic cooperation, technological innovation, and resource sharing between regions and countries. On the basis of its own national conditions, China has taken a “small step, but fast run” rather than a “shock therapy” approach, with new policies or programs. This was first demonstrated on a small scale, and then incrementally spread to the whole country, to ensure success and reduce the trial-and-error cost as far as possible. China has increasingly realized the importance of achieving an “ecological civilization” by learning from the past and promoting an aggressive decoupling of the relationship between environmental pollution and associated loss of natural capital and economic growth, and chosen to make sustainable development a national strategy."

"No country in human history ever grew so fast over such a long period of time. Average annual growth rates of 9.7 percent pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. The policy of reform and openness also led to a fundamental departure from norms in Mao’s China, replacing collectivism and group conformity with individual performance and diversity. The unparalleled rise of China also fundamentally changed the international world order. The country began to wield its economic influence in search of raw materials with the confidence and intentions of a future global superpower. China’s growing economic power inevitably resulted in an increasingly assertive foreign and security policy."

"We are seeing the power of economic freedom spreading around the world. Places such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan have vaulted into the technological era, barely pausing in the industrial age along the way. Low-tax agricultural policies in the subcontinent mean that in some years India is now a net exporter of food. Perhaps most exciting are the winds of change that are blowing over the People's Republic of China, where one-quarter of the world's population is now getting its first taste of economic freedom. At the same time, the growth of democracy has become one of the most powerful political movements of our age. In Latin America in the 1970s, only a third of the population lived under democratic government; today over 90 percent does. In the Philippines, in the Republic of Korea, free, contested, democratic elections are the order of the day. Throughout the world, free markets are the model for growth. Democracy is the standard by which governments are measured."

"China’s battle against poverty has benefited the largest number of people in human history. To sustain poverty reduction gains, China will focus more on achieving endogenous development in areas that have been lifted out of poverty and introduce vigorous measures to support rural revitalization. Our goal is to achieve common prosperity and high-quality development including through the rural revitalization strategy with a focus in five key areas: industry development, human capital, culture, ecological environment and local governance.”"

"Today, China’s economic power makes U.S. lectures about morality and human rights imprudent. Within a decade, it will make them irrelevant. Within two decades, it will make them laughable. By then the Chinese may threaten to withhold most-favored-nation status from the United States unless we do more to improve living conditions in Detroit, Harlem, and South-Central Los Angeles."

"China remains the world's largest manufacturer, with four trillion dollars in foreign-exchange reserves, a sum equivalent to the world’s fourth-largest economy... Last spring, China abolished registered-capital and other requirements for new companies, and in November it allowed foreign investors to trade shares directly on the Shanghai stock market for the first time... The risks to China's economy have rarely been more visible. The workforce is aging more quickly than in other countries, because of the one-child policy, and businesses are borrowing money more rapidly than they are earning it... The growth of demand for energy and raw materials has slowed, more houses and malls are empty, and nervous Chinese savers are sending money overseas, to protect it in the event of a crisis... To maintain economic growth, China is straining to promote innovation... After China had spent years investing in science and technology, the share of its economy devoted to research and development surpassed Europe's... The era of Xi Jinping has defied the assumption that China's fitful opening to the world is too critical and productive to stall."

"The economy's still going but the short term will be a bit painful."

"Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty."

"The problem is that you don’t restructure the world without restructuring the Chinese economy and you can’t restructure the Chinese economy without restructuring the political system all the way up to the very tippy top. The people at the tippy top have some say in how that all goes down... the question is how much."

"In China, money – capital, to be more technical – is considered a political good, and it only has value if it can be used to achieve political goals. Common concepts in the advanced world such as rates of return or profit margins simply don’t exist in China, especially for the state owned enterprises (of which there are many) and other favored corporate giants that act as pillars of the economy. Does this generate growth? Sure. Explosive growth? Absolutely. Provide anyone with a bottomless supply of zero (or even subzero) percent loans and of course they’ll be able to employ scads of people and produce tsunamis of products and wash away any and all competition."

"In this struggle we are inspired by the example of those countries where staunch supporters of the socialist option are in power. They are China which has the world in awe of its spectacular successes in the economy and the social sphere. Cuba, which the US imperialism has vainly tried to strangle for six decades. The dynamically developing Vietnam. These countries challenge capitalist globalization, refuse to submit to their diktat and score successes on the socialist path. The experience of fraternal Byelorussia is highly instructive."

"I think the [Chinese government] wants to step in further to solve this situation."

"Chinese economic growth today also has several commonalities with both the Soviet and South Korean experiences. While the early stages of Chinese growth were spearheaded by radical market reforms in the agricultural sector, reforms in the industrial sector have been more muted. Even today, the state and the Communist Party play a central role in deciding which sectors and which companies will receive additional capital and will expand—in the process, making and breaking fortunes. As in the Soviet Union in its heyday, China is growing rapidly, but this is still growth under extractive institutions, under the control of the state, with little sign of a transition to inclusive political institutions. The fact that Chinese economic institutions are still far from fully inclusive also suggests that a South Korean–style transition is less likely, though of course not impossible."

"[suspended by authorities due to] a change in the regulatory environment on financial technology"

"Regarding the Africa’s Business Heroes competition, Mr. Ma had to miss the finale due to a schedule conflict"

"[Ma is] lying low for the time being"

"After the Japanese withdrew, the combination of the communists’ proven nationalist fervor and their program for wealth redistribution resulted in a mounting tide of popular support. This support facilitated the relatively quick defeat of the GMD, and the People’s Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949. Subsequently China collectivized its agricultural, industrial, and commercial systems. After Mao died in 1976, China’s new leaders embarked on a policy of economic reform, including the personal responsibility system and market socialism. Innovations involved allowing farmers to cultivate land for personal profit at prices set by market demand (once state quotas were met), permitting privately owned businesses, and allowing state-controlled foreign investment."

"The economic reforms and related government policies unleashed spectacular economic growth. As China’s economy rapidly expanded, so did its need for energy, and after 1993 China dramatically increased oil imports. The booming economy permitted some citizens to become enormously rich while drastically reducing the percentage of the country’s people living in poverty. It also led to major environmental problems. Partly because China has made enormous economic progress and has improved the lives of the large majority of its people, the government appears to enjoy significantly more popular support currently than it did in the late 1980s. Contemporary public protests center on issues that have arisen from economic reforms or have resulted from the accompanying excesses and corruption. Many demonstrators appeal to national officials for help in combating local problems, and in recent years the central government has responded with policies to address some of their major concerns, like improving conditions for people migrating from rural areas to cities and reducing air and water pollution. Political change in China, including democratization, appears to be an ongoing but long-term process."

"The financial fallout would be far reaching. Evergrande reportedly owes money to around 171 domestic banks and 121 other financial firms"

"[Chinese development has its roots in the 1949 Chinese Revolution, carried out by the Chinese Communist Party headed by Mao Zedong, whereby it liberated itself from the imperialist system. This allowed it to develop for decades under a planned economy largely free of constraints from outside forces, establishing a strong agricultural and industrial economic base. This was followed by a shift in the post-Maoist reform period to a hybrid system of more limited state planning along with a much greater reliance on market relations (and a vast expansion of debt and speculation) under conditions—the globalization of the world market—that were particularly fortuitous to its “catching up.” Through trade wars and other pressures aimed at destabilizing China’s position in the world market, the United States is already seeking to challenge the bases of China’s growth in world trade. China, therefore, stands not so much for the successes of but rather for its inherent limitations. The current Chinese model, moreover, carries within it many of the destructive tendencies of the system of capital accumulation. Ultimately, China’s future too depends on a return to the process of revolutionary transition, spurred by its own population."

"The problem for China is political. China is held together by money, not ideology. When there is an economic downturn and the money stops rolling in, not only will the banking system spasm, but the entire fabric of Chinese society will shudder. Loyalty in China is either bought or coerced. Without available money, only coercion remains. Business slowdowns can generally lead to instability because they lead to business failure and unemployment. In a country where poverty is endemic and unemployment widespread, the added pressure of an economic downturn will result in political instability."

"China’s capacity to meet new demands for agricultural products has been assessed by analysts inside and outside China since the 1980s. Economists have anticipated that market forces would induce China to import grains and other land-intensive crops, but Chinese officials (motivated by food security and other concerns) have long resisted these forces and sought to maintain self-sufficiency. However, officials are now adjusting their strategies to accommodate their country’s growing reliance on agricultural imports."

"So far, the world economy, particularly Australia and the United States, have benefited greatly from Chinese economic growth. This is likely to continue to be the case for some time... There is no real alternative to the United States as the global leader. China doesn't want the role. It would only divert its focus from its own development challenges. And to be frank, China would not be trusted by many countries, particularly in the , to be the global leader... Authoritarian state capitalism, seen today in China and Russia. While both countries have introduced elements of a market economy, private companies there operate side-by-side and at a significant disadvantage to state owned entities favored by government regulators. This mixed economy is not paralleled on the political side. What is emerging is an increasingly authoritarian political system with decreasing space for civil society, free media, and dissent. This model is attractive to authoritarian leaders around the world who see it as way to maintain power while still growing their economies."

"China's fourteen percent growth rate does not mean it's going to be a world power. It means that coastal China, where the economic growth is taking place, is joining the rest of the Pacific Rim. The disparity with inland China is intensifying."

"[It would be] naive to think that the turmoil in the market doesn’t have the potential to have second-order and third-order impact. Clearly with the changes that are taking place in the Evergrande situation, it’s concerning."

"At Smithfield, like most industrial pig farms, the abuse and torture primarily comes not from rogue employees violating company procedures. Instead, the cruelty is inherent in the procedures themselves. One of the most heinous industry-wide practices is one that DxE activists encountered in abundance at Circle Four: gestational crating. Where that technique is used, pigs are placed in a crate made of iron bars that is the exact length and width of their bodies, so they can do nothing for their entire lives but stand on a concrete floor, never turn around, never see any outdoors, never even see their tails, never move more than an inch. That was the condition in which the activists found the rotting piglet corpses and the two ailing piglets they rescued. [...] In the U.S. states where factory farms actually thrive, these devices continue to be widely used, which means a vast majority of pigs in the U.S. are subjected to them. The suffering, pain, and death these crates routinely cause were in ample evidence at Smithfield Foods, as accounts, photos, and videos from DxE demonstrate. [...] What has vested these two piglets with such importance to the FBI is that their rescue is now part of what has become an increasingly visible public campaign by DxE and other activists to highlight the barbaric suffering and abuse that animals endure on farms like Circle Four. Obviously, the FBI and Smithfield — the nation’s largest industrial farm corporation — don’t really care about the missing piglets they are searching for. What they care about is the efficacy of a intent on showing the public how animals are abused at factory farms, and they are determined to intimidate those responsible. Deterring such campaigns and intimidating the activists behind them is, manifestly, the only goal here."

"FBI agents are devoting substantial resources to a multistate hunt for two baby piglets that the bureau believes are named Lucy and Ethel. The two piglets were removed over the summer from the Circle Four Farm in Utah by animal rights activists who had entered the {Smithfield Foods-owned factory farm to film the brutal, torturous conditions in which the pigs are bred in order to be slaughtered. While filming the conditions at the Smithfield facility, activists saw the two ailing baby piglets laying on the ground, visibly ill and near death, surrounded by the rotting corpses of dead piglets. [...] Under normal circumstances, a large industrial farming company such as Smithfield Foods would never notice that two sick piglets of the millions it breeds and then slaughters were missing. Nor would they care: A sick and dying piglet has no commercial value to them. Yet the rescue of these two particular piglets has literally become a federal case — by all appearances, a matter of great importance to the Department of Justice. On the last day of August, a six-car armada of FBI agents in bulletproof vests, armed with s, descended upon two small shelters for abandoned farm animals: Ching Farm Rescue in , and Luvin Arms in . These sanctuaries have no connection to DxE or any other rescue groups. They simply serve as a shelter for sick, abandoned, or otherwise injured animals. Run by a small staff and a team of animal-loving volunteers, they are open to the public to teach about farm animals. [...] Subsequent events confirmed that this show of FBI force was designed to intimidate the sanctuaries, which played no role in the rescue."

"Our pursuit of our individual businesses, which often involves transferring manufacturing and a great deal of engineering out of the country, has hindered our ability to bring innovations to scale at home. Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs—we lose our hold on new technologies. Losing the ability to scale will ultimately damage our capacity to innovate."

"Big American companies fiercely protect their intellectual property and trade secrets, fearful of giving an edge to rivals. But they have little choice in China—and Washington is looking on with alarm. To gain access to the Chinese market, American companies are being forced to transfer technology, create joint ventures, lower prices and aid homegrown players. Those efforts form the backbone of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious plan to ensure that China's companies, military and government dominate core areas of technology like artificial intelligence and semiconductors."