Introduction

Abstract

China, ‘the sleeping giant in Asia’ as Napoleon once referred to it, has experienced a series of political, social, and economic transformations since the early twentieth century.¹ During the past century, China’s economic development had been interrupted time and again. Nevertheless, in recent decades, the ‘sleeping giant’ did eventually wake. The Chinese economy was nearly bankrupted at the end of the Civil War in the late 1940s, and seriously damaged in the GLF (1958–60) and GCR (1966–76) movements. However, since the late 1970s when the Chinese government began the gradual transformation of its Stalinesque centrally planned system, the Chinese economy has grown with exceptional rapidity: it has achieved an average GNP annual growth rate of about 10 per cent since the early 1980s (which is among the highest in the world during the same period). Per capita personal consumption in 1978 was 184 yuan, having increased slowly from 76 yuan in 1952. In 1995, it dramatically increased to 2311 yuan which is 30.41 times and 12.56 times of that in 1952 and 1978 respectively.²