中国外交网经济发展介绍

The Trend Toward a Coordinated Economic Structure

Before 1978, Chinas economy had a weak foundation in agriculture, and the ratio between light and heavy industries was unbalanced. Since 1978, China has adopted a series of policies and measures giving priority to the development of light industry, expanding the import of top-quality consumer goods, strengthening the construction of basic industry and facilities, and devoting major efforts to developing tertiary industry, so as to make Chinas economic structure more coordinated, optimized and balanced. The relations between different industries and within industries in terms of proportion have clearly been improved; the proportion of primary industry has declined, while that of the secondary and tertiary industries has grown; the growth of the overall national economy was driven formerly by the primary and secondary industries, but now it is being driven by the secondary and tertiary industries. Actually the growth of secondary industry becomes the main engine of rapid development for Chinas economy.

While the whole industrial structure is changing, the internal structure of every industry has also changed greatly. In the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries, the proportion of pure-agricultural output value has declined, while that of forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries has grown; the structure of light and heavy industries has escalated from the light-pattern structure stressing "consumption compensation" to the heavy-pattern structure of "investment guidance"; within the tertiary industry the proportion of the traditional industries, such as communications, transportation and commerce, has declined, while real estate, banking and insurance, and telecommunications, have developed rapidly.

Introduction

Along with the coming of 2000, the PRC had undergone a glorious yet tortuous course of 50 years, amid great changes in Chinese society. Before the founding of New China in 1949, Chinas highest yearly outputs of major industrial and agricultural products were 445,000 tons of yarn, 2.79 billion meters of cloth, 61,880,000 tons of coal, 320,000 tons of crude oil, 6 billion kwh of electric energy production, 150 million tons of grain, and 849,000 tons of cotton. Since the founding of New China, especially in the 21 years after the start of the reform and opening to the outside world in 1978, China has made great achievements in economic construction and social development. In 1999, the GDP was 8,205.4 billion yuan, an increase of 6.4 times over 1978, at constant prices; the outputs of some major industrial and agricultural products, such as grain, cotton, meat, edible oil, coal, steel, cement, cloth and TV sets, leapt from a backward position to first place in the world.

In accordance with Deng Xiaopings theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, the 13th National Congress of the CPC, held in 1987, adopted the strategy of three stages for Chinas economic construction: First, doubling the GNP of 1980 to end shortages of food and clothing, which was basically completed at the end of the 1980s; second, quadrupling the GNP of 1980 by the end of the century, which was achieved in 1995, ahead of schedule. Thus, the Chinese government worked out the Ninth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Term Objectives for the Year 2010, which put forward new objectives: Those for the