Историческое развитие Китая

M oreover, China’s integration into the world economy even now is far more limited than is generally believed. I n fact, much of the Chinese interior has been barely touched by foreign trade and it has received precious little foreign direct investment. T he coastal provinces may have been transformed (though few of those living in the mountainous areas within Guangdong province would agree), but not so the Chinese interior. M

igrant workers have flooded into Guangdong and China’s metropolitan centres, and their remittances have served to reduce absolute poverty in the western provinces. B ut technological spillovers have been very limited, and the rapid reduction in poverty that occurred across China in the 1980s had far more to do with the transformation of agriculture and rural industrialization than with the open door. I

n fact, the effect of joining the WTO may even have been to increase poverty; some of the literature certainly suggests as much. All in all, therefore, we do far better to think of the Chinese economic miracle as being made in China rather than in the workshops and shopping malls of the West.

China’s post-1978 goal was rapid economic development similar to that of the four tigers, focused on domestic rather than foreign benefit. After 1978, the Chinese government would continue to own and to control most major Chinese industrial and economic sectors, including transportation, communication, energy, mining, manufacturing, and financial services. Private control of agricultural land was made possible through long-term leases for farmers, and a free market was opened up to small business people and those providing consumer goods and services. Foreigners would also be permitted to participate in joint ventures with Chinese companies and eventually to be able to open wholly-owned companies under Chinese regulations in selected areas of the Chinese economy.

In almost all years since 1978, the Chinese domestic economy has grown dramatically while a progressively higher percentage of the economy has moved to the ownership of Chinese and foreign joint venture investors, and to individual Chinese owners, and even foreign private enterprises. But control over most of the largest Chinese economic sectors, such as communications, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and financial services, has still remained mostly in the hands of the Chinese government.

China’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of 8−10 percent annually since 1978. That growth rate is virtually unprecedented for a poor, large agricultural country and leads to a doubling of the economy about every 7 years. If that high rate of economic growth continues, China is estimated to become the largest economy in the world by about 2020 in terms of purchasing power parity.

So far, China has been able to achieve its economic successes without giving up significant areas of sovereignty. China has kept its major industries and its financial sector largely under its ownership and control, and continues to make its currency relatively nonconvertible. At the same time, China has become the largest recipient of direct foreign investment in the world, holds the second largest foreign exchange reserves in the world after Japan (about $ 1 trillion by the end of 2006), and is now considered to be the manufacturing «workshop» for the world.

China’s economy today is ten times larger than it was in 1978, and continues to grow at 10 percent per year. By contrast, since 1980, roughly the beginning of economic reform in China, up until 2005 yearend, the economy of Latin America as a whole grew 10 percent not per year, but cumulatively. And in comparison with 28 years of 9−10 percent annual growth in China, the growth of India’s economy has accelerated to only 6 percent, and only since 1991. The result is that the Chinese economy is now three times that of India, and the gap is growing.

In 2000, China’s accounted for only 7.

1% of the world’s total GDP (in PPP terms). In 2010, that figure increased to 13.

3%. By 2020, it is expected to reach 20.

7%.

In 2000, China topped Italy to become the world’s sixth-biggest economy. In 2005, China overtook France to become the fifth-largest. In 2006, it moved up again by knocking off the U.K. In 2007, China became the third-largest economy by topping Germany.

Two important dimensions of this growth are the emergence of a large middle class and a rising income gap. As an indicator of how a few people in China have become fabulously wealthy, in 2003, worldwide sales of Bentley automobiles were 200; 70 of them were sold in China at price of 2 million rmb, or 250 times average urban income. The U.S. equivalent would be if 200 people bought those cars at $ 7.5 million each.

The urban-rural gap was large even in the Maoist era (Mao gave a lot of lip service to promoting the peasants' interests, but most of that era’s policies actually favored urban dwellers). The gaps that have increased in the reform period of the last few decades are between the coastal areas and the inland. The coastal areas have done extremely well because of the growing importance of foreign trade; most foreign trade involves production and workers along a narrow strip along the coast, particularly Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze Delta, the area from Shanghai up the Yangtze River and a little bit in the northeast. These areas have been the major participants in international trade, with a big demand for labor, and incomes in those areas have gone up particularly rapidly.

M ore important is the growing gap between skilled and unskilled workers, even in the urban sector. D uring the Maoist era, there was a rigid wage structure. T

he difference between highly paid and relatively low-paid workers was modest. B ut in the reform period, this wage structure has become marketized, and for people with skills, whether managerial or engineering or anything in short supply, the price has been bid up dramatically. T

he unskilled, entry-level wage, on the other hand, has been relatively flat. A lot of people have been able to move in from the countryside, so those wages have been slowly rising, but at nothing like the pace of wages for people with scarce skills.

At the beginning of the reform period China’s inequality was substantially less than most countries one would compare it with—India or the East and Southeast Asian countries. Today its degree of income inequality is roughly the same as that in India and certain Latin American countries that are known for a high degree of income inequality.

There are many problems associated with China’s current economic development policies, including heavy-handed government controls, abuse of the environment, and a growing competition with the global economy for scarce energy and other resources. Most foreign analysts, however, believe that China will be able to continue to grow at about 8 to 10 percent until at least 2020.

C hina’s economy could overtake the U.S. economy by 2019, «given reasonable assumptions», according to The Economist in 2011. T he posting says that «Absent a total disaster in China, the transition will take place, and that right soon. W hy? W ell, China remains far behind the developed world in per capita terms, and because there is plenty of catch-up left to accomplish, there’s plenty of room for rapid growth.

A nd China’s population is enormous. It has over four times as many people as America, and so its output per capita only needs to be about a fourth of America’s to match it in total size."

«China will overtake the USA to become the largest world economy in 2017,» predicts the Euromonitor International. The global market research group writes: «By 2020 there will be a major shift in the global balance of economic power compared to 2010… Emerging economies will rise in importance and China will have overtaken the USA to lead the list of the world’s top ten largest economies by GDP measured in PPP terms.»