ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the transformation of Chinese economy and society. That transformation has four components – industrialization, urbanization, marketization and globalization. Industry has two main sectors. Primary industries extract resources for conversion into other products. Secondary, or manufacturing, industries convert the output of the primary industries into components or final products. Urbanization is transforming China, for good and ill. While urbanization is central to the drive towards a "moderately prosperous" economy, it also affects the quality of life through its impact on the environment, peoples' health, happiness and "social capital". China's factor markets have seen considerable development, but its extent varies from factor to factor. Marketizing Chinese housing has been described as "probably the largest neo-liberal reform project ever implemented in the world". China has come to the world, and the world to China, so that domestic events reverberate around the global economy, and China's own economic situation depends upon happenings elsewhere.