ABSTRACT

Since economic reforms started in 1978, China has sustained a prolonged period of high economic growth and prosperity that has been rarely observed in world development history. This is not because there are only a few countries that have managed to achieve the same pace and length of economic growth, but because China is the most populous nation in the world. The Chinese population is larger than that of all the newly industrialized nations combined, including Japan and the four Asian little dragons of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong. China is the only socialist economy among all the newly industrialized economies, and its success provides a good example of how a centrally planned economy can be transformed into a dynamic and fast-growing market one, providing useful experiences to other centrally planned economies in the former USSR and other eastern European countries.