OVERVIEW
China and its economy
Capital : Beijing
Population : 1.3 billion
Area : 9.6 million sq km
Currency : Yuan Ren Min Bi
GNP : $4 Trillion (2001)
GDP : PPP $7.262 trillion (2004 est.)
Per Capita : $5,600 (2004 est.)
Form : People's Republic
Official Languages : Chinese (Mandarin)
Growth Rate in Real GDP :
1999 7.1%
2000 8.0%
2001 7.3%
2002 8.0%
2003 8.4%
2004 9.1%
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 4.1% (2004 est.)
Located in South East Asia, China is home to 1.3 billion people and constitutes 22% of the world's population. Stringent rules of the Marxist policies, an autocratic socialist system, left China a conservative, under-developed nation for most part until refurbishment of economic and trade policies in the late 1970 and 1980 sluggish dragged a nation of China's gigantic magnitude towards market-oriented economic development. The well known Open Door Policy introduced in 1978 began the journey of opening up China, its economy and the markets to the outside world. Since then China has been a potential market to some of the world's best known brands, products and services, allowing thousands of private firms to bloom, from indigenous small-town enterprises, to giant manufacturing concerns, built with foreign money.
China and the World Trade Organization
On December 11, 2001, China officially became the 143rd member of the World Trade Organization after 15 years of onerous negotiations to conform to WTO requirements in terms of trade and investment policies and open markets. Largely symbolic for a country with a political history such as China, it was mainly a strategic decision made by the Chinese government to face the new revolution of economic g ...