Introduction

Abstract

China’s economy has been growing rapidly over the past three decades. Since it implemented its “open-door and economic reform” policy in 1979, its gross domestic product (GDP) has increased rapidly from $175.6 billion in 1979 to 4.91 trillion in 2009 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2010), which trailed only the US ($14.256 trillion) and Japan ($5.07 trillion) in the world (International Monetary Fund, 2010). China’s average GDP growth rate over the past three decades is about 9.5 per cent. It is expected that the Chinese economy will grow by 9.5 per cent in 2010 based on the forecast by the World Bank in June 2010 (The World Bank, 2010) and will, for first time, become the world’s second largest economy, surpassing Japan.