Marketisation in China from 1997 to 2014: Achievements and contribution to growth

Abstract

China has persevered in its market-oriented economic reform for 40 years. Guided by a reform strategy of ‘crossing the river by feeling the stones’, China managed to avoid the major economic decline and crisis that occurred in other transitional economies such as Russia and others in Eastern Europe, and successfully transformed its centrally planned economy into a largely market-oriented economy. In the past 40 years, China has achieved average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 9.5 percentage points, and overtook the United States to become the world’s largest economy, measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), in 2014. Rapid economic