Economic Growth of China Essay

Submitted By rjvithal
Words: 619
Pages: 3

China

From centuries of imperialist rule, to a misguided conception of socialism, China as we now know today has become a superpower, due to its immense and thriving economy which has slowly built up over years of social unrest. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, China fell into a period of desolation with its economy in shambles due to plague, epidemics, famine, war, civil unrest and inflation. After the CCP had seized power, China was now proclaimed as the “Peoples’ Republic.” The shift from an archaic rule into a socialist government was slowly starting to improve China’s economy which had been in a state of collapse for years. From remnants to affluence, China is now the fastest and largest growing economy in the world.

Over the past century, China’s predominant values and beliefs have changed immensely over a extensive period of time. From the early 1900’s to late 1940’s, China’s economy had diminished under capitalism. Between the 50’s and 90’s, which were vastly influenced by the belief of state ownership otherwise known as socialism, changes have been made to China’s economic planning in order to adjust and adapt with the rest of the world. With the equality of wages, unlike previous years, now being regarded as a lower priority for the state and the maximization of economic growth deemed essential in order to increase the living standards in China.

The system of ownership of enterprise in which China has had for the past 40 or so years has been a Socialist Economy, otherwise known as “planned socialism” which involves the government controlling recourses and enterprise. What this actually amounts to in lucid terms, is basically a toned down version of capitalism, with buyers and sellers having the freedom to allocate recourses into various forms of production while the government owns the recourses. Until the early 1990s China’s state-owned industrial enterprises provided approximately 45 million urban jobs and more than half of the country’s industrial output, tax revenues, and exports. To think that living standards and overall economic growth could have risen as vigorously as they had done so during the first 15 years of China’s economic reform had productivity not been rising in state industry is somewhat hard to believe.

In recent times, China’s tremendous economic progression over the past 40 years has caused the nation to become one of the worlds leading producers, as well as improving upon international trade, employment, education and the overall living standards of the Chinese people today.