Title: China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States - EveryCRSReport.com
Headings: China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States
China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States
Topic areas
China's Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States
Contents
Figures
Tables
Summary
The History of China's Economic Development
China's Economy Prior to Reforms
The Introduction of Economic Reforms
China's Economic Growth and Reforms: 1979-the Present
Causes of China's Economic Growth
Measuring the Size of China's Economy
China as the World's Largest Manufacturer
Changes in China's Wage and Labor Cost Advantages
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China
Factors Driving China's FDI Outflow Strategy
China's Merchandise Trade Patterns
China's Major Trading Partners
Major Chinese Trade Commodities
Major Long-Term Challenges Facing the Chinese Economy
China's Incomplete Transition to a Market Economy
Industrial Policies and SOEs
A State-Dominated Banking Sector, Excess Credit, and Growing Debt
Environmental Challenges
Corruption and the Relative Lack of the Rule of Law
Demographic Challenges
Economic Goals of the 19 th Party Congress of the Communist Party
China's Belt and Road Initiative
Made in China 2025
Challenges to U.S. Policy of China's Economic Rise
Footnotes

Content: China's Major Merchandise Trading Partners in 2018
Table 6. Major Chinese Merchandise Imports in 2018
Table 7. Major Chinese Merchandise Exports in 2018
Summary
Prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization nearly 40 years ago, China maintained policies that kept the economy very poor, stagnant, centrally controlled, vastly inefficient, and relatively isolated from the global economy. Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free-market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world's fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging 9.5% through 2018, a pace described by the World Bank as "the fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history." Such growth has enabled China, on average, to double its GDP every eight years and helped raise an estimated 800 million people out of poverty. China has become the world's largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis), manufacturer, merchandise trader, and holder of foreign exchange reserves. This in turn has made China a major commercial partner of the United States. China is the largest U.S. merchandise trading partner, biggest source of imports, and third-largest U.S. export market. China is also the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities, which help fund the federal debt and keep U.S. interest rates low. As China's economy has matured, its real GDP growth has slowed significantly, from 14.2% in 2007 to 6.6% in 2018, and that growth is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fall to 5.5% by 2024.