This month marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Looking back at history, China has trodden an arduous and sometimes treacherous journey over the past century to get itself out of misery and near-disintegration.
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There is no lack of statistics about the scale of social and economic transformation that has taken place since Deng Xiaoping launched the reform and opening up in 1978. Reforms have not come without pain, or twists and turns, especially controversies over liberalisation and the conversion from a command economy to the market.
In 1992, a few years after the Tiananmen tragedy, the 14th Party Congress mandated a socialist market economy. Joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 was another momentous move.
From 1990 to 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by nearly 10 per cent annually on average, contributing more than a quarter of global growth.
Such a jump could not have been possible without a vibrant and innovative private sector which, according to some mainland experts, provides 80 per cent of urban employment and 90 per cent of enterprises.
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But the good times have reached a critical juncture before a complex interplay of policy, institutional and geopolitical factors.