Chinese Economic Reform - Economic Performance Since Reform

Economic Performance Since Reform

China's economic growth since the reform has been very rapid, exceeding the East Asian Tigers. Economists estimate China's GDP growth from 1978 to 2005 at 9.5% a year. Since the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's reforms, China's GDP has risen tenfold. The increase in total factor productivity (TFP) was the most important factor, with productivity accounting for 40.1% of the GDP increase, compared with a decline of 13.2% for the period 1957 to 1978—the height of Maoist policies. For the period 1978–2005, Chinese GDP per capita increased from 2.7% to 15.7% of US GDP per capita, and from 53.7% to 188.5% of Indian GDP per capita. Per capita incomes grew at 6.6% a year. Average wages rose sixfold between 1978 and 2005, while absolute poverty declined from 41% of the population to 5% from 1978 to 2001. Some scholars believed that China's economic growth has been understated, due to large sectors of the economy not being counted.

Read more about this topic:  Chinese Economic Reform

Famous quotes containing the words economic, performance and/or reform:

    “The idealist’s programme of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.”
    —Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)

    “Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother.... Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can’t even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers.”
    —Norman Douglas (1868–1952)

    “... most reform movements in our country have been cursed by a lunatic fringe and have mingled sound ideas for social progress with utopian nonsense.”
    —Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)