The economy of the People's Republic of China is the second largest in the world when measured by Purchasing Power Parity, with a GDP (PPP) of US $9.412 trillion in 2005. It is the world's fastest growing major economy, and its continued growth is critical to the overall health of the world economy and to the welfare of its population of 1.3 billion. As a developing country, China’s economic growth in recent years dramatically exceeds all developing countries. Current GDP per capita grew a paltry 17% in the Sixties rising to 70% in the Seventies, and China surged ahead of India registering a remarkable growth of 63% in the turbulent Eighties and finally reaching a peak growth of 175% in the Nineties.
Nowadays, China is indeed one of the most powerful and influential economy in the world. However, the living standards and technological quality average people enjoy are still below developed countries; besides, Chinese prosperity still remains restricted to the coastal and northern provinces only. As a result, China’s market offers huge opportunity and potential to all aspects of enterprise and investment.
China's economy is a vista of eye-catching opportunities flanked by pitfalls, into which multinational companies poured more than $60 billion of direct investment last year. Numbers in individual sectors are staggering. China, for example, now has 377 million mobile phone subscribers, nearly twice as many as the United States, and over the first nine months of this year subscribers of just one carrier, China Mobile, paid to send more than 178 billion short text messages. The number of messages sent in September was more than 40 percent higher than in September 2004.
Chinese automakers assembled more than 4.2 million vehicles in the first nine months of the year, up 8.2 percent from a year earlier, and the number of cars sold rose 16.8 percent. Chinese markets, moreover, are far from saturated. The World Bank puts car penetration in China at only seven vehicles for every 1,000 people, compared with more than 480 per 1,000 people in the United States and the 12-nation euro zone.
China’s market has even more space to be developed and invested than these statistics. American entrepreneurs are attracted to China to discover new business opportunities hidden in the market. Because of the powerful influence China now has toward the world economy, foreign countries are placing higher attention to China’s development and possible partnership opportunity.
American entrepreneurs are giving more consideration in building up a relationship with China’s businesses and conventions.
|