An Analysis of the Economic Environment and Economic Policy in China in Recent Years

Since early 1998, in order to resolve the problems of the looming financial crisis and to expand [domestic] demand, the government [of China] undertook many projects and has achieved considerable success. Nevertheless, our national economy is always a tremendous and extremely complicated system. For a huge developing country such as ours, situated as it is in the preliminary stage of the transformation from a planned economy to a socialist market economy, and faced with an environment in which science and technology are developing rapidly throughout the world, and in which there is an extraordinarily intense competition among all kinds of economic forces, it is in no way surprising or unexpected that we would frequently encounter all sorts of difficulties and problems in our economic growth and development. We ought to be confident that under normal and general conditions, for every difficulty that we encounter in economic development, there are bound to be manyâand at least twoâmethods of resolution. We are entirely capable of finding the correct method to overcome our difficulties and resolve our problems and, in the end, bring about our society's economic growth relatively quickly and well. Precisely for these reasons, the analysis of the economic environment and of our economic policies has to be a topic to which we have to pay special and frequent attention. Objectively speaking, the economic environment is itself multifaceted, multilayered and susceptible to change. This means that in terms of policy analysis, we have to strive to avoid becoming subjective, one-sided, or ossified in our ways of thinking. Instead, those of us involved in the work of economic study and research must observe the economic situation, analyze policy, and raise questions from many angles and perspectives.