Chinese banking officials say Bank of America will retain at least a 5% stake in China Construction Bank, disappointing investors who hoped it would sell more, while Japan Airlines outlined the direction of its budget carrier. WSJ’s Jake Lee and Alison Tudor discuss.
China has generally implemented reforms in a gradualist or piecemeal fashion.
In 2006, China announced that by 2010 it would decrease energy intensity 20% from 2005 levels.
China is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with an average growth rate of 10% for the past 30 years.
Some economists believe that Chinese economic growth has been in fact understated during much of the 1990s and early 2000s, failing to fully factor in the growth driven by the private sector and that the extent at which China is dependent on exports is exaggerated.
Technology, labor productivity, and incomes have advanced much more rapidly in industry than in agriculture.
A report by UBS in 2009 concluded that China has experienced total factor productivity growth of 4 per cent per year since 1990, one of the fastest improvements in world economic history.
China’s ongoing economic transformation has had a profound impact not only on China but on the world.
The ministry made the announcements during a press conference held in Xiamen on the upcoming United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) World Investment Forum and the 14th China International Fair for Investment and Trade.
“China is now the fifth largest investing nation worldwide, and the largest among the developing nations,” said Shen Danyang, vice-director of the ministry’s press department.
China is aiming to be the world’s largest new energy vehicle market by 2020 with 5 million cars.
In large part as a result of economic liberalization policies, the GDP quadrupled between 1978 and 1998, and foreign investment soared during the 1990s.
Even with these improvements, agriculture accounts for only 20% of the nation’s gross national product.
China is the world’s largest producer of rice and wheat and a major producer of sweet potatoes, sorghum, millet, barley, peanuts, corn, soybeans, and potatoes.
Hogs and poultry are widely raised in China, furnishing important export staples, such as hog bristles and egg products.
China is one of the world’s major mineral-producing countries.
China’s leading export minerals are tungsten, antimony, tin, magnesium, molybdenum, mercury, manganese, barite, and salt.
The largest completed project, Gezhouba Dam, on the Chang (Yangtze) River, opened in 1981; the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest engineering project, on the lower Chang, is scheduled for completion in 2009.
Beginning in the late 1970s, changes in economic policy, including decentralization of control and the creation of special economic zones to attract foreign investment, led to considerable industrial growth, especially in light industries that produce consumer goods.
Since the 1980s China has undertaken a major highway construction program.
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Asia Today: Bank of America’s China Stake
