ABSTRACT
Despite its murky classification in China’s statistics, private enterprise has indubitably entered the center stage of the Chinese economy in the twenty-first century. According to a recent report by the Asian Development Bank (ADP) (2003: 2), “private activity already comprises the predominant share of the PRC economy, with that share lying somewhere between one-half and two-thirds (in total gross industrial output) depending on how narrowly one defines the term ‘private’.” The lower bound of one-half comes from a narrow definition of private sector as privately owned firms (“siying qiye”) and individually owned businesses (“getihu”), while the upper bound of two-thirds comes from a broad definition of the private sector as non-state-owned firms. In an earlier study by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) (2000: 16), China’s private sector (“siying qiye” and “getihu”) was estimated to account for about 33 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1998.
