ABSTRACT
For the Chinese economy 1986 was a year of progress, but also of growing doubt and dissatisfaction about the process and implications of the program of economic reform, which has been transforming the economic system since 1979. There is growing evidence that the Chinese rural economy is changing, the most visible sign of such structural change is movement of labor out of agricultural production and into rural industry. Growth in the value of industrial output rose steadily from a rate of 3.7 percent in 1981, to 18 percent in 1985, a figure that Chinese leaders took as a signal that the economy was becoming "overheated." With the installation of 6 million kilowatts of new generating capacity, total electricity production grew to 445.3 billion kilowatt hours, an increase of 9.4 percent over 1985. Like the energy shortage, China's transportation deficiency is a problem for which there is no easy or inexpensive solution.
