ABSTRACT
From around the world, presidents and prime ministers, Politburo members and cardinals, kings, queens, and princes traveled to China, bearing gifts and prospecting for deals. Early 1984 China's economy seemed extraordinarily healthy. China had money to spend. The clampdown on expenditures of the 1979-82 period had been successful, at least from China's point of view. China's domestic economy was also flourishing. By 1984, after five years of steadily increasing harvests, China no longer needed to import food and was turning into a grain-exporting nation. China's offshore oil reserves were not as great as had been believed in 1984. The low price of coal slowed down Hammer's mine project. China scaled back its plans for nuclear power and decided to do some of the work on its own.
