ABSTRACT
China overtook Germany to become the world's top exporter in 2009 (Wall Street Journal, 2010) 2 and surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy in the second quarter of 2010 (Bloomberg News, 2010) 3 . It has also been estimated that China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2030 (IADB, 2004). This extraordinary transformation has been achieved during the last three decades since Deng Xiaoping introduced free-market reforms in 1978. During this period, China's economy has been growing at around 9 per cent a year (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2009).
