2005年中国经济回顾与展望

Review of China’s economy in 2005 and its prospect

In recent years, despite increasingly severe global economic fluctuations, China’s economy has maintained a stable and relatively fast growth, bringing hope and a new driving force to world economic development. The National Development and Reform Commission said in November that gross domestic product (GDP) would grow about 9.3 percent for all 2005, compared with 9.4 percent growth in the first three quarters of the year. China will leapfrog Italy, France, and Britain to be officially recognized as the world’s fourth-biggest economy if, as expected, it revises up its 2004 gross domestic product by nearly 300 billion dollars. While China’s economy is growing rapidly, it continues to have a relatively low per-capita GDP and millions of Chinese live on a dollar a day. Participation in either the global multilateral trading frameworks or regional trading agreements both embodies a country’s willingness to open its economy to the outside world and spurs the reform of its economic establishments. A country’s participation in regional trading arrangements sends an unequivocal signal to the outside that the country will have a long-term and institutionalized trade and investment liberalization policy, which is very important to foreign investors.