title: Jean Alexander

text: Alexander first appeared in "Coronation Street" in 1962 in a minor role as a landlady. Two years later, she returned to the programme as Hilda Ogden. She started playing the role on 8 July 1964, finally leaving on 25 December 1987. Ogden became highly popular with viewers and Alexander was often identified with her character. In the "40 Years on Coronation Street" special, she recounted an incident that had happened years previously: while she was shopping, a fan asked if she was Hilda. She responded in her normal accent, "I beg your pardon?" Taken aback, the fan said, "Oh, don't you talk funny!"


title: Jean Alexander

text: The British League for Hilda Ogden was established in 1979 by Sir John Betjeman, Willis Hall, Russell Harty, Laurence Olivier and Michael Parkinson, among others. In 1984, hundreds of fans sent her condolence cards after the death of her on-screen husband Stan Ogden; the actor who played him, Bernard Youens, died a few months before his character was killed off. In 1985 she received the Royal Television Society Award for her performance on "Coronation Street". When she decided to leave the show in 1987, fans started "Save Hilda!" campaigns; however, many were unaware she had made her own decision to depart. Her final scenes in the programme were aired on 25 December 1987, attracting nearly 27 million viewers, the highest number in the show's history.


title: Jean Alexander

text: In 2005 the UK "TV Times" poll voted her as the "Greatest Soap Opera Star of All Time". On 6 December 2010, Alexander spoke by telephone to ITV's "This Morning" to discuss her time on "Coronation Street" on the day of the drama's 50th anniversary episode.


title: Jean Alexander

text: In 1988, Alexander made a guest appearance in the long-running BBC comedy series "Last of the Summer Wine" as Auntie Wainwright, the money-grabbing local junk shop owner. She returned for a second guest appearance in 1989, and finally became a series regular in 1992, remaining until the end of the series in 2010.


title: Jean Alexander

text: Her film credits include "Scandal" (1989) and "Willie's War" (1994). Alexander voiced Mrs Santa in the Robbie the Reindeer film "Hooves of Fire" (1999), and also appeared in "Boon" and as Lily in the children's series "The Phoenix and the Carpet". She starred with Patricia Hodge and Lionel Jeffries in the comedy series "Rich Tea and Sympathy", and appeared in the quiz show "Cluedo". Later, she appeared in "Barbara", "Heartbeat", "Where the Heart Is" and "The Afternoon Play".


title: Jean Alexander

text: Alexander never married, stating that she put her acting career first. She was a close friend of her "Coronation Street" husband, Bernard Youens. Her autobiography, "The Other Side of the Street: The Autobiography of Jean Alexander", was published in 1989.


title: Jean Alexander

text: She lived for many years in Southport, Merseyside, and in 2009 she joined with others to campaign successfully for a temporary library in the town while the central library was being refurbished. She was a keen gardener and after her death was commemorated in the town with a memorial bench at Southport Flower Show, where she was a regular visitor.


title: Jean Alexander

text: She donated her 1955 Qualcast Panther lawnmower to the British Lawnmower Museum in the town, where it is still on display.


title: Jean Alexander

text: Alexander announced her retirement in 2012, two years after her last television appearance. Her acting career lasted for more than 60 years. She celebrated her 90th birthday on 11 October 2016, but was taken ill and died three days later in Southport Hospital.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach is an unincorporated community on the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey County, California. The small coastal residential community of mostly single-family homes is also notable as a resort destination, and the home of the golf courses of Cypress Point Club, Monterey Peninsula Country Club, and Pebble Beach Golf Links.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Inn at Spanish Bay, The Lodge at Pebble Beach and four of the eight golf courses inside the Pebble Beach community are among the local assets owned by the "Pebble Beach Company". Residents pay road fees for maintenance as well as Monterey County property taxes. Application of the property tax revenues is the realm of the Pebble Beach Community Services District, a public agency that is independent of local private facilities, e.g., golf courses, with an elected Board of Directors that manages essential functions including fire protection and emergency medical services, supplemental law enforcement, wastewater collection and treatment, recycled water distribution, and garbage collection, disposal and recycling. The community's post office is named Pebble Beach, as is its identity; whereas, the U.S. Census Bureau aggregates census returns from Pebble Beach as part of the larger census-designated place of Del Monte Forest. However, residents and visitors associate and identify with the name Pebble Beach; boundaries of the Del Monte Forest extend outside of the Pebble Beach community boundaries encompassing a larger forest area that comprises the wooded parts of Monterey Peninsula.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Area open space is partly administered by the Del Monte Forest Conservancy, a non-profit organization designated by Monterey County and the California Coastal Commission to acquire and manage certain properties by conservation easement and, as well, by fee title. The Conservancy is governed by a self-elected volunteer board of up to 12 members working with a small part-time group of contractors and volunteers to preserve the open space within the Del Monte Forest and non-forested sites of Pebble Beach. All board members must be property owners and residents of Pebble Beach.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The name Pebble Beach was originally given to a rocky cove and beach strand, a prominent coastal segment of the Rancho Pescadero Mexican land grant that had been awarded to Fabián Barreto in 1836. Barreto died and the land went through several owners. In the 1850s, Chinese immigrants formed a series of fishing settlements along Carmel Bay including one at Stillwater Cove, next to Pebble Beach. They collected abalone and various fish. In 1860, David Jack bought the Mexican land grant, then sold it in 1880 to the Pacific Improvement Company (PIC), a consortium of The Big Four "railroad barons."


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: By 1892, the PIC laid out a scenic road that they called the 17-Mile Drive, meandering along the beaches and among the forested areas between Monterey and Carmel. The drive was offered as a pleasure excursion to guests of the PIC-owned Hotel Del Monte, and it was intended to attract wealthy buyers of large and scenic residential plots on PIC land. Sightseers riding horses or carriages along the 17-Mile Drive sometimes stopped at Pebble Beach to pick up agate and other stones polished smooth by the waves, and they commented on a few unusual tree formations known as the Witch Tree and the Ostrich Tree—the latter formed by two trees leaning on each other. At that time, the Chinese fishing community continued in existence despite mounting anti-Chinese sentiment among Monterey residents of European heritage. At roadside stands, Chinese-American girls sold shells and polished pebbles to tourists. In the 1900s, the automobile began replacing horses on 17-Mile Drive, and by 1907 there were only automobiles. Adverse sentiments by local non-Chinese towards the Chinese fisherman and villagers of Pebble Beach was ironic in view of the vital contribution Chinese laborers made to the development of the Central Pacific Railroad, the fundamental fount of capital for the "Big Four," founders of PIC.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: In 1908, architect Lewis P. Hobart was hired by PIC manager A.D. Shepard to design the Pebble Beach Lodge, a rustic log-cabin-style one-story inn completed by 1909. The rambling lodge, featuring private patio nooks and a wide pergola made of local logs, was positioned halfway along 17-Mile Drive, overlooking Pebble Beach. The great hall or assembly room was wide and was flanked by massive fireplaces at each end. A tavern and kitchen supplied food and drink, and later, cottages could be rented for overnight guests. Operated under the same management as the Hotel Del Monte, food service was available at all hours, including fresh local abalone chowder. The lodge was built as the community center for the wealthy residents of the Del Monte Forest, and was popular as a rest stop for 17-Mile Drive motorists. Samuel Finley Brown Morse, a distant cousin to Samuel F. B. Morse known as the inventor of Morse Code, was hired in the 1910s to manage the PIC. In 1916, Morse convinced the PIC to create a golf course at the edge of Pebble Beach and Stillwater Cove. The lodge burned down on December 17, 1917, while the course was under construction, and a completely different structure replaced it: the Del Monte Lodge. PIC decided to dismantle the old El Carmelo Hotel and use the wood to reconstruction Del Monte Lodge. Hobart worked with Clarence Tantau to create a luxurious multi-story hotel, and Hobart designed a signature "Roman Plunge" pool to the east of the hotel. The golf course and the new lodge held a grand opening on February 22, 1919.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Morse formed the Del Monte Properties Company on February 27, 1919, and acquired the extensive holdings of the PIC, which included the Del Monte Forest, the Del Monte Lodge and the Hotel Del Monte. Morse brought his son on board as president in 1948. The lodge was expanded with offices and a shopping arcade. In 1954, Morse's son-in-law was named president of the Del Monte Properties Company.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Samuel Finley Brown Morse died in 1969. Alfred Gawthrop Jr served as Chairman of Del Monte Properties through the 1970s. On March 30, 1977, the Del Monte Properties Company was reincorporated as the Pebble Beach Corporation. The Del Monte Lodge was renamed the Lodge at Pebble Beach.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: In May 1979, 20th Century Fox, later bought by Marvin Davis, purchased the Pebble Beach Corporation. When the film company was sold to Rupert Murdoch in 1985, Davis kept several company assets not directly related to the film and TV industry, including the Pebble Beach Company and the Aspen Skiing Company.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: In 1990 Davis sold the Pebble Beach Company to the Japanese businessman Minoru Isutani, who made it a subsidiary of the Japanese resort company Taiheiyo Club Inc. under a holding company called the Lone Cypress Company. Isutani was investigated by the FBI in the early 1990s for money laundering. Isutani's $341M loss taken on the sale of Pebble Beach was cited as an example.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: In 1999 the Pebble Beach Company was acquired from Lone Cypress by an investor group led by Clint Eastwood, Arnold Palmer, and Peter Ueberroth. In 2000, the company initiated Measure A, a controversial development proposal. Eastwood appeared in a legal and advertising campaign urging voters to pass MeasureA. In 2006, the plan went before the California Coastal Commission for approval. On June 14, 2007, the plan was submitted again. Commissioner Sara Wan called it "wholesale destruction of the environment," and Measure A was denied in an 8to4 vote.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The famous landmark, known as the "Witch Tree," stood for decades at Pescadero Point until it fell during a storm on January 14, 1964. It was sometimes used as scenic background in movies and television. It was displayed as part of the coast of Italy, in the 1951 movie "Mr. Imperium", with Lana Turner, Ezio Pinza, Majorie Main and Barry Sullivan. That tree was also part of the background in an early scene from the 1956 movie "Julie", featuring Doris Day, while she was fleeing from her psychopathic husband, played by Louis Jourdan.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The Pescadero "Ghost Tree" gave its name to an extreme surfing location known to have storm waves as large as high. Effective 2009, the surf break of Ghost Tree became effectively off limits, the result of a decision by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that personal watercraft, which were a virtual necessity for the tow-in only surf spot, were no longer permitted in specified waters of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The community has 4,531 residents and is relatively affluent, home to many retirees and well-educated workers in the social service (education and health care), management and finance sectors. Monterey County has a large Hispanic population, which is 59% of the County. However, Pebble Beach is more ethnically homogenous, with 91.4% of the population being White, 5.3% Asian, 2.3% Hispanic or Latino, and 0.4% African American. The median household income is $99,788, with 54% with incomes between $50,000 and $150,000 and a little more than a quarter of households, 26.2%, with incomes exceeding $150,000. Household income figures, however, may not accurately reflect the area's wealth as 50.8% of households received social security income and 30.8% were retired. Less than half of the population 16 or over, 46.4%, are employed. Of those who work, the plurality (25%) are employed in the social service, education and health care sector, followed by the management (15%) and finance sectors (15%). 2.3% of the population live below the poverty level. The area's adult population is fairly well-educated, with 61% having at least a Bachelor's degree, and 98% having a high school diploma, compared to 25% and 80% at the national average, respectively.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach has seven 18-hole golf courses, and one 9-hole course. Pebble Beach Golf Links, The Links at Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill and Peter Hay Golf Course are owned by Pebble Beach Company and are all public courses. Poppy Hills is also a public course. Private courses located at Pebble Beach are Cypress Point Club and the private Monterey Peninsula Country Club's two courses, the Dunes Course and the Shore Course. Pebble Beach Company also owns Del Monte Golf Course a few miles away in Monterey, which is the oldest continuously operating course in the Western United States.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Several of these courses are widely celebrated, especially Pebble Beach Golf Links. Designed by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, it is the most famous course in the Western United States, and along with Augusta National remains one of only two courses to have ever beaten Pine Valley Golf Club to top spot in "Golf Digest's" biennial list of America's 100 greatest courses. Pebble Beach Golf Links was the site of the US Open in 1972, 1982, 1992, 2000, 2010 and 2019. The course is set to host the tournament again in 2027.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am (formerly known as the Crosby Clambake) is held on three of the courses here annually in February. The tournament began in 1937 at Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, where it was last played in 1942. After World War II, it moved to Pebble Beach in 1947, and has continued annually since.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The Pebble Beach golf resort partnered with IBM in 2017 to use the artificial intelligence Watson as a live concierge embedded in a mobile app. Watson was used to guide visitors around the resort.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The annual Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance auto show has been held in Pebble Beach since 1950. The event focuses on classic cars, and each year features a particular marque as its focus. In addition to the car competition, there is an auction, a classic car tour, and an automotive art exhibit.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: At the county level, Pebble Beach is currently represented on the Monterey County Board of Supervisors by Supervisor Dave Potter.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Unlike most unincorporated communities, presidential election results are listed for Pebble Beach in the Monterey County statement of vote for some elections. The totals listed below are for the seven presidential elections from 1976-2000.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach is in Monterey County on the Monterey Peninsula at . It is bordered by Carmel-by-the-Sea to the south, Pacific Grove to the north, the City of Monterey to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Big Sur is about a drive south on scenic State Route 1. Cypress Point in Pebble Beach is the westernmost landfall in Southern California; the dividing line between the north and south portions of the state coastline is situated at the center of the Monterey Bay shoreline near Moss Landing. Santa Cruz and San Francisco are about 45 and to the north, respectively.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach owes much of its picturesque qualities to the granitic rock outcroppings, stacks and small islets visible along the coast, these comprising the local portion of the federal California Coastal National Monument, which is administered by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management. These are characteristic of the Salinian Block, a geologic province which runs from the Baja California Peninsula and up through California west of the San Andreas Fault. The historically inactive Fanshell Beach Fault, which exits land near Fanshell Beach in Pebble Beach, creates a divide between nearby Cypress Point and northerly Spyglass Hill that is visually appreciable. Native Monterey Cypress forest grows on the south-westerly side of Fanshell Beach Fault: a direct relationship between the underlying rock base and soils and the cypress cover type has not been confirmed.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: There are several habitat types within Pebble Beach. These include intertidal zones, littoral and supralittoral and closed-cone coniferous forest, that encompasses, e.g., Monterey Pine Forest and Monterey Cypress Forest. The Monterey Pine forest is habitat to numerous rare and endangered species including Hickman's potentilla and Yadon's piperia, both of which are federally protected species. Hickman's potentilla was first discovered within the Del Monte Forest in present-day Pebble Beach by the botanist, Alice Eastwood in the year 1900. After a survey in 1992 by Earth Metrics Inc. this plant was listed as a protected species by the U.S. Government.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The public schools serving Pebble Beach are Carmel High School, Carmel Middle School, and River School, all located in Carmel, and Forest Grove School, Pacific Grove Middle School, and Pacific Grove High School, all located in Pacific Grove. Pebble Beach is also home to Stevenson School, a co-ed half-boarding, half-day private high-school, located near the prestigious Spyglass golf course. The high school runs alternative radio station KSPB, which broadcasts BBC World Service when students are not operating the station.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: The Pebble Beach Authors & Ideas Festival has been held in September each year at Pebble Beach since 2013, after moving from its original venue at Carmel-by-the-Sea.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach has few businessessuch as at-home cottage industriesapart from those owned by the Pebble Beach Company (except the golf courses, a private school, and a deli) and no sidewalks. Most of the very expensive houses are obscured from view behind old-growth trees. It is quiet, secluded, and often experiences foggy weather, which occurs frequently on the Monterey Peninsula in general, but especially there because of the area adjoining the open ocean.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: Pebble Beach is a gated community, but differs from most gated communities. There is an entrance fee for which The Pebble Beach Company charges $10.75 (per vehicle) from tourists driving along the 17-Mile Drive. Pebble Beach residents may purchase small license plate badges that are attached near their cars' license plates or in their windshields to avoid paying the tourist fee. The badges are valid for one year, and their fee varies on the resident's property value.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: In 2014 (airing 2017), Pebble Beach was the location for the HBO show "Big Little Lies", a drama which showcases relationships between high income status individuals based on the book of the same name.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: On the "" episode "", the doctor (Robert Picardo) lists Pebble Beach as an option to play golf on the holodeck.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: On "The Golden Girls", Sophia Petrillo claims that she had the chance to marry Bing Crosby, and if she had, she would be a wealthy widow with her own place in Pebble Beach.


title: Pebble Beach, California

text: On "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode "The Terrorist Attack", Larry David considers going golfing at Pebble Beach to avoid perishing in a potential terrorist attack in Los Angeles.


title: Takashi Tezuka

text: Upon graduating the Design Department of Osaka University of Arts, he joined Nintendo in April 1984 and became a co-designer of some of the most critically acclaimed Nintendo series, including "Mario" and "The Legend of Zelda". Tezuka is fond of fantasy novels such as J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", and wrote the story and script for "The Legend of Zelda" and "". Tezuka co-designed Yoshi, who debuted in "Super Mario World" after Shigeru Miyamoto had originally wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur since "Super Mario Bros. 3".


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: Skid Row were an Irish blues rock band of the late 1960s and early 1970s, based in Dublin and fronted by bass guitarist Brendan "Brush" Shiels. It was the first band in which future Thin Lizzy members Phil Lynott and Gary Moore played professionally.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: The band was formed in August 1967, comprising Brendan 'Brush' Shiels on bass guitar, Noel 'Nollaig' Bridgeman on drums, Bernard "Ben" Cheevers on guitar, and Phil Lynott on vocals. Shiels and Cheevers had played together in a number of groups in Dublin before forming Skid Row. The band's first gig was in September 1967 in a basement club in Lower Abbey Street in Dublin 1.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: Cheevers left the band in September 1968 to continue working full-time in the electrical industry. Before his departure, the search for a suitably proficient guitarist resulted in Gary Moore joining the band as a fifth member. Moore and Cheevers both played in the band for a short 'hand-over' period. Robbie Brennan temporarily replaced original drummer Bridgeman until June 1969 and Cheevers was replaced by the 16-year-old Gary Moore in mid 1968, and the band recorded a single, "New Places, Old Faces" / "Misdemeanour Dream Felicity", for the Irish Song Records label (the only released recording of Lynott with Skid Row).


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: Later that year Shiels dropped Lynott from the line-up, converting Skid Row to a power trio by making himself the lead vocalist. By way of compensation, Shiels gave him a bass guitar he had bought from former musician Robert Ballagh for £49 in 1967 while with the Uptown Band, he taught Lynott to play bass and, after a stint with 'Orphanage', Lynott went on to international fame as founder, bassist and vocalist for Thin Lizzy. The band recorded a second single for 'Song', "Saturday Morning Man" / "Mervyn Aldridge". These two singles, plus three tracks from a BBC recording, were issued on the 'Hux' label as "Live and on Song" in April 2006. At the end of 2006 a number of Skid Row demo tapes featuring Phil Lynott were discovered. These were his earliest recordings (from 1968) and had been presumed lost for decades.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: With the returning Bridgeman, Skid Row played support to some of the great rock groups of the 1960s, including Fleetwood Mac in January 1970. Moore was influenced by the Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green, who was in turn impressed by Moore's guitar playing and introduced him to the Columbia/CBS record company. A third single, "Sandie's Gone (Part 1)" / "Sandie's Gone (Part 2)", was released on the band's new label in April 1970, and a number of sessions and concerts were also recorded for the BBC during this period. The band released its first album "Skid", in October 1970. A second LP, "34 Hours" – so called because it took them a mere 34 hours to record it – was released in early 1971, preceded by the single "Night Of The Warm Witch" / "Mr. De-Luxe". Skid Row performed on the legendary German TV music show "Beat Club" on 18 March 1971. There were short tours of Europe (October 1970, with Canned Heat) and of the USA (October/November 1970 and August and October 1971). A widely bootlegged show billed as "The Whiskey, Los Angeles, August 5, 1970", and featuring John Bonham as a guest, is more likely from August 1971. A third album was recorded in the Autumn of 1971 but Moore left the band in December 1971 just before another planned US tour. He was temporarily replaced by Eric Bell (from Thin Lizzy) for some live appearances before Paul Chapman became the band's full-time guitarist. Moore later played with Thin Lizzy, replacing Eric Bell. Chapman overdubbed Moore's guitar tracks on the unreleased album but neither version was made public for almost twenty years. As the band faltered, Chapman left in July 1972 (later joining UFO). Shiels then teamed with drummer John Wilson (ex-Them, Taste and Stud) and future Sparks guitarist Adrian Fisher to form a band named simply 'Brush'.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: Skid Row reformed in Ireland in 1973, initially with Shiels, Wilson, singer Eamonn Gibney (ex-Alyce) and guitarist Ed Deane, later adding keyboard player Kevin McAlea. Gibney would later join Colm Wilkinson and Helen Jordan to sing as The Dajacs at the 1980 Irish final for the Eurovision Song Contest placing 7th. Shiels/Deane/Wilson line-up released the single "Dublin City Angels" / "Slow Down". John Wilson was replaced by Paddy Freeney before the band split again in early 1974. For the next few months Shiels played in the 'Bell-Brush Band' with Eric Bell and Timmy Creedon (drums, ex-Orphanage), sometimes joined by Eamonn Gibney. At the end of the year Shiels, Moore and Bridgeman briefly reunited for a series of gigs, and a 1975 line-up of Shiels (guitar/vocals), Bridgeman, Jimi Slevin (lead guitar/vocals, ex-Alyce, ex-Peggy's Leg) (born June 1950, Dublin), Timmy Creedon (second drummer/vocals) and Johann Brady (bass) recorded the Skid Row single "The Spanish Lady" / "Elvira". In 1976 Jody Pollard (guitar, ex-Elmer Fudd) replaced Pat O'Farrell in a line-up with Shiels (vocals/mandolin), Bridgeman (drums), John Brady (bass) and Dave Gaynor (drums), recording the Phil Lynott-produced double A-sided single "Coming Home Again" / "Fight Your Heart Out" and unreleased track "Skid Row Flashback". The 1976 double-disc live album of Rock n' Roll standards "Alive And Kickin" featured Shiels, Bridgeman, Brady, Pollard, Gaynor and Ian Anderson. In 1978 Pollard rejoined, this time replacing Eric Bell alongside Shiels, Bridgeman, Brady and Joe Staunton (guitar, ex-Orphanage).


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: John Brady was killed in a car accident on 15 February 1993, Phil Lynott died of septicaemia in January 1986, Gary Moore died from a heart attack in February 2011 and Noel Bridgeman died in March 2021. Skid Row had little commercial success outside Ireland and the UK, although "Skid" reached No.30 on the UK Albums Chart. More of their recorded material was released between 1990 and 2006.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: It was reported that in 1987, Jon Bon Jovi asked Gary Moore to sell the name 'Skid Row' to the American heavy metal band for $35,000 (Bon Jovi part-owns the music publishing rights of this band). Lead singer Sebastian Bach recalled,


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: However, Shiels maintains that Moore simply referred the band to Shiels to discuss the rights to the name, but that it was never followed up. Shiels still occasionally performs as 'Brush Shiels' Skid Row', as recently as February 2005. Bridgeman went on to perform studio work with Clannad, The Waterboys and Altan and was part of Irish folk singer Mary Black's band in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He died in March 2021.


title: Skid Row (Irish band)

text: Brush Shiels returned to his Skid Row legacy once more releasing "Mad Dog Woman" (originally titled "Skid Row Revisited") – an album of new material and re-recordings of Skid Row songs – through his website in June 2009. He also thanked the other Skid Row "for the generosity of spirit in acknowledging the contribution of the original Skid Row" by using the name. In January 2012 Shiels issued a public request to Jon Bon Jovi via YouTube to contact him about the use of the name 'Skid Row'. This was connected to Shiels having recently recovered the rights to his own songs recorded with the original Skid Row.


title: Economic history of China (1949–present)

text: The economic history of China describes the changes and developments in China's economy from the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 to the present day.


text: China has been the fastest growing economy in the world since the 1980s, with an average annual growth rate of 10% from 1978 to 2005, based on government statistics. Its GDP reached $USD 2.286 trillion in 2005. Since the end of the Maoist period in 1978, China has been transitioning from a state dominated planned socialist economy to a mixed economy. This transformation required a complex number of reforms in China's fiscal, financial, enterprise, governance and legal systems and the ability for the government to be able to flexibly respond to the unintended consequences of these changes. This transformation has been accompanied by high levels of industrialization and urbanization, a process that has influenced every aspect of China's society, culture and economy.


text: The large size of China means there are major regional variations in living standards that can vary from extreme poverty to relative prosperity. In much of rural China, peasants live off the land, while in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing a modern service-based economy is forming.


text: Since the PRC was founded in 1949, China has experienced a surprising and turbulent economic development process. It has experienced revolution, socialism, Maoism, and finally the gradual economic reform and fast economic growth that has characterised the post-Maoist period. The period of the Great Leap Forward famine and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution negatively impacted the economy. However, since the period of economic reform began in 1978, China has seen major improvements in average living standards and has experienced relative social stability. In that period, China has evolved from an isolated socialist state into a backbone of the world economy.


text: The high growth rates of the reform period were caused by the massive mobilization of resources, and the shift of control of those resources from public to private ownership which allowed for improved efficiency in the management of those resources. The benefits reaped from this era of massive resource mobilization are now coming to an end and China must rely more on efficiency improvements in the future to further grow its economy.


text: China's economic system before the late-1990s, with state ownership of certain industries and central control over planning and the financial system, has enabled the government to mobilize whatever surplus was available and greatly increase the proportion of the national economic output devoted to investment.


text: Analysts estimated that investment accounted for about 25 percent of GNP in 1979, a rate surpassed by few other countries. Because of the comparatively low level of GNP, however, even this high rate of investment secured only a small amount of resources relative to the size of the country and the population. In 1978, for instance, only 16 percent of the GNP of the United States went into gross investment, but this amounted to U.S. $345.6 billion, whereas the approximately 25 percent of China's GNP that was invested came to about the equivalent of U.S. $111 billion and had to serve a population 4.5 times the size of that in the United States.


text: The limited resources available for investment prevented China from rapidly producing or importing advanced equipment. Technological development proceeded gradually, and outdated equipment continued to be used as long as possible. Consequently, many different levels of technology were in use simultaneously (see Science and technology in China). Most industries included some plants that were comparable to modern Western facilities, often based on imported equipment and designs. Equipment produced by Chinese factories were generally some years behind standard Western designs. Agriculture received a smaller share of state investment than industry did and remained at a much lower investment average than that of technology and productivity did. Despite a significant increase in the availability of tractors, trucks, electric pumps and mechanical threshers, most agricultural activities were still performed by people or animals.


text: Although the central administration coordinated the economy and redistributed the resources to the regions that required them when necessary, most of the economic activity was very decentralized and there was little flow of goods and services between regions, causing those suffering areas to wait for the central administration to step in before any relief was given. For example, roughly 75 percent of the grain grown in China was consumed by the families that produced it, with the remaining 25 percent being distributed to the other regions that required it.


text: One of the most important sources of growth in the economy was to show the comparative advantages of each locality by expanding its transportation capacity. The transportation and communications sectors were growing and improving, but not at a fast enough pace to handle the volume of traffic that a fast growing modern economy requires, due to the scarcity of investment funds and the lack of the advanced technology needed to support such growth.


text: Because of the limited interaction among the regions, a vast variety of differing geographic zones were created, with a broad spectrum of incompatible technologies were in use, creating areas that greatly differed in economic activities, organizational forms, and prosperity.


text: Within any given city, enterprises ranged from tiny, collectively owned handicraft units, barely earning subsistence level incomes for their members, to modern, state owned factories, whose workers received steady wages along with free medical care, bonuses, and an assortment of other benefits.


text: The agricultural sector was diverse, accommodating well equipped, "specialized households" that supplied scarce products and services to the local markets, along with wealthy suburban villages specializing in the production of vegetables, pork, poultry, and eggs to sell in the nearby free market cities, fishing villages on the seacoast, there were also herding groups on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and poor, struggling grain producing villages in the arid mountains of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.


text: Despite formidable constraints and disruptions, the Chinese economy was never stagnant. Production grew substantially between 1800 and 1949 and increased fairly rapidly after 1949. Before the 1960s, however, production gains were largely matched by population growth, so that productive capacity was unable to outdistance essential consumption needs significantly, particularly in agriculture. For example, grain output in 1979 was about twice as much as in 1952, but the population had also doubled, which mostly countered this increase in production, and as a result, very little surplus was accrued, even in high yielding years. Furthermore, very few resources could be spared for investment in capital goods, such as machinery, factories, mines, railroads, and other productive assets. The relatively small size of the capital stock caused productivity per worker to remain low, which in turn perpetuated the inability of the economy to generate a substantial surplus.


text: When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, its leaders' fundamental long-range goals were to transform China into a modern, powerful, socialist nation. In economic terms these objectives meant industrialization, improvement of living standards, narrowing of income differences, and production of modern military equipment. As the years passed, the leadership continued to subscribe to these goals. But the economic policies formulated to achieve them were dramatically altered on several occasions in response to major changes in the economy, internal politics, and international political and economic developments.


text: An important distinction emerged between leaders who felt that the socialist goals of income equalization and heightened political consciousness should take priority over material progress and those who believed that industrialization and general economic modernization were prerequisites for the attainment of a successful socialist order. Among the prominent leaders who considered politics the prime consideration were Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, and the members of the Gang of Four. Leaders who more often stressed practical economic considerations included Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. For the most part, important policy shifts reflected the alternating emphasis on political and economic goals and were accompanied by major changes in the positions of individuals in the political power structure. An important characteristic in the development of economic policies and the underlying economic model was that each new policy period, while differing significantly from its predecessor, nonetheless retained most of the existing economic organization. Thus the form of the economic model and the policies that expressed it at any given point in Chinese history reflected both the current policy emphasis and a structural foundation built up during the earlier periods.


text: In 1949 China's economy was suffering from the debilitating effects of decades of warfare. Many mines and factories had been damaged or destroyed. At the end of the war with Japan in 1945, Soviet troops had dismantled about half the machinery in the major industrial areas of the northeast and shipped it to the Soviet Union. Transportation, communication, and power systems had been destroyed or had deteriorated because of lack of maintenance. Agriculture was disrupted, and food production was some 30 percent below its pre-war peak level. Further, economic ills were compounded by one of the most virulent inflations in world history.


text: As the Nationalists fled during their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, they stripped China of liquid assets including gold, silver, and the country's dollar reserves. Nationalists forces also attempted to firebomb industrial sites, but workers were able to stop them at many such locations. By the time the Nationalists were defeated, commerce had been destroyed, the national currency rendered valueless, and the economy was based on barter.


text: The chief goal of the government for the 1949–52 period was simply to restore the economy to normal working order. The administration moved quickly to repair transportation and communication links and revive the flow of economic activity. The banking system was nationalized and centralized under the People's Bank of China. To bring inflation under control by 1951, the government unified the monetary system, tightened credit, restricted government budgets at all levels and put them under central control, and guaranteed the value of the currency. The CCP's success in overcoming hyperinflation and stabilizing prices became a major source of the new government's legitimacy.


text: Commerce was stimulated and partially regulated by the establishment of state trading agencies (commercial departments), which competed with private traders in purchasing goods from producers and selling them to consumers or enterprises. State trading agencies served as a mechanism for re-creating and integrating markets and through this process of re-integration between urban and rural economies helped stabilize the value of money.


text: Transformation of ownership in industry proceeded slowly. About a third of the country's enterprises had been under state control while the Nationalist government was in power (1927–49), as was much of the modernized transportation sector. The CCP immediately made these units state-owned enterprises upon taking power in 1949. The remaining privately owned enterprises were gradually brought under government control, but 17 percent of industrial units were still completely outside the state system in 1952. As the industrial means of production were transferred to the state, conditions for workers improved. The growing number of state workers were entitled to permanent employment, an eight-hour day, medical benefits, subsidized food and housing, as well as an eight-grade wage scale that was consistent across different state owned enterprises.


text: Under a nationwide land reform movement, titles to about 45 percent of the arable land were redistributed from landlords and more prosperous farmers to the 60 to 70 percent of farm families that previously owned little or no land. The success of land reform meant that at the founding of the PRC in 1949, China could credibly claim that for the first time since the late Qing period that it had succeeded in feeding one fifth of the world's population with only 7% of the world's cultivable land. Once land reform was completed in an area, farmers were encouraged to cooperate in some phases of production through the formation of small "mutual aid teams" of six or seven households each. Thirty-eight percent of all farm households belonged to mutual aid teams in 1952. By 1952 price stability had been established, commerce had been restored, and industry and agriculture had regained their previous peak levels of production. By 1953, China had rapidly recovered its economy.


text: Having restored a viable economic base, the leadership under Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other revolutionary veterans was prepared to embark on an intensive program of industrial growth and socialization. For this purpose the administration adopted the Soviet economic model, based on state ownership in the modern sector, large collective units in agriculture, and centralized economic planning. The Soviet approach to economic development was manifested in the First Five-Year Plan (1953–57). As in the Soviet economy, the main objective was a high rate of economic growth, with primary emphasis on industrial development at the expense of agriculture and particular concentration on heavy industry and capital-intensive technology. Soviet planners helped their Chinese counterparts formulate the plan. Large numbers of Soviet engineers, technicians, and scientists assisted in developing and installing new heavy industrial facilities, including many entire plants and pieces of equipment purchased from the Soviet Union.


text: Government control over industry was increased during this period by applying financial pressures and inducements to convince owners of private, modern firms to sell them to the state or convert them into joint public-private enterprises under state control. China nationalized commerce, industry, and handicrafts over the period 1953 to 1956. By 1956 approximately 67.5 percent of all modern industrial enterprises were state owned, and 32.5 percent were under joint public-private ownership. No privately owned firms remained. Handicraft industries were organized into cooperatives, which accounted for 91.7 percent of all handicraft workers by 1956.


text: Agriculture underwent extensive organizational changes. In fall 1953, the CPC's Central Committee instituted a state monopoly in purchasing and marketing of grain (and other raw materials). This policy served to break the relationship between wealthy peasants and grain merchants, ending the ability to profit from speculation in grain.


text: To facilitate the mobilization of agricultural resources, improve the efficiency of farming, and increase government access to agricultural products, the authorities encouraged farmers to organize increasingly large and socialized collective units. This collectivization continued over the period 1955 to 1958. From the loosely structured, tiny mutual aid teams, villages were to advance first to lower-stage, agricultural producers' cooperatives, in which families still received some income on the basis of the amount of land they contributed, and eventually to advanced cooperatives, or collectives. In the advanced producers' cooperatives, income shares were based only on the amount of labor contributed. In addition, each family was allowed to retain a small private plot on which to grow vegetables, fruit, and livestock for its own use. The collectivization process began slowly but accelerated in 1955 and 1956. In 1957 about 93.5 percent of all farm households had joined advanced producers' cooperatives.


text: In terms of economic growth the First Five-Year Plan was quite successful, especially in those areas emphasized by the Soviet-style development strategy. A solid foundation was created in heavy industry. Key industries, including iron and steel manufacturing, coal mining, cement production, electricity generation, and machine building were greatly expanded and were put on a firm, modern technological footing. Thousands of industrial and mining enterprises were constructed, including 156 major facilities. Industrial production increased at an average annual rate of 16 percent between 1953 and 1957, and national income grew at a rate of 9 percent a year.


text: The industrial working class grew from 6 million to 10 million. Industrial work places organized as work units (danwei) provided subsidized housing, permanent jobs, education, and medical care.


text: Despite the lack of state investment in agriculture, agricultural output increased substantially, averaging increases of about 4 percent a year. This growth resulted primarily from gains in efficiency brought about by the reorganization and cooperation achieved through collectivization. As the First Five-Year Plan wore on, however, Chinese leaders became increasingly concerned over the relatively sluggish performance of agriculture and the inability of state trading companies to increase significantly the amount of grain procured from rural units for urban consumption.


text: Before the end of the First Five-Year Plan, the growing imbalance between industrial and agricultural growth, dissatisfaction with inefficiency, and lack of flexibility in the decision-making process convinced the nation's leaders – particularly Mao Zedong – that the highly centralized, industry-based Soviet model was not appropriate for China. The income gap between rural and urban Chinese had widened. The situation was one Mao had begun to worry about before 1957, with his 1956 "On the Ten Major Relationships" identifying the important of "the relationship between heavy industry on one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other."


text: In 1957 the government adopted measures to shift a great deal of the authority for economic decision making to the provincial-level, county, and local administrations. In 1958 the Second Five-Year Plan (1958–62), which was intended to continue the policies of the first plan, was abandoned. In its place the leadership adopted an approach that relied on spontaneous heroic efforts by the entire population to produce a dramatic "great leap" in production for all sectors of the economy at once. Further reorganization of agriculture was regarded as the key to the endeavor to leap suddenly to a higher stage of productivity. A fundamental problem was the lack of sufficient capital to invest heavily in both industry and agriculture at the same time. To overcome this problem, the leadership decided to attempt to create capital in the agricultural sector by building vast irrigation and water control works employing huge teams of farmers whose labor was not being fully utilized. Surplus rural labor also was to be employed to support the industrial sector by setting up thousands of small-scale, low-technology, "backyard" industrial projects in farm units, which would produce machinery required for agricultural development and components for urban industries. Mobilization of surplus rural labor and further improvements in agricultural efficiency were to be accomplished by a "leap" to the final stage of agricultural collectivization—the formation of people's communes.


text: People's communes were created by combining some 20 or 30 advanced producers' cooperatives of 20,000 to 30,000 members on average, although membership varied from as few as 6,000 to over 44,400 in some cases. When first instituted, the communes were envisaged as combining in one body the functions of the lowest level of local government and the highest level of organization in agricultural production. Communes consisted of three organizational levels: the central commune administration; the production brigade (roughly equivalent to the advanced producers' cooperatives, or a traditional rural village), and the production team, which generally consisted of around thirty families. At the inception of the Great Leap Forward, the communes were intended to acquire all ownership rights over the productive assets of their subordinate units and to take over most of the planning and decision making for farm activities. Ideally, communes were to improve efficiency by moving farm families into dormitories, feeding them in communal mess halls, and moving whole teams of laborers from task to task. In practice, this ideal, extremely centralized form of commune was not instituted in most areas.


text: Ninety-eight percent of the farm population was organized into communes between April and September 1958. Very soon it became evident that in most cases the communes were too unwieldy to carry out successfully all the managerial and administrative functions that were assigned to them. In 1959 and 1960, most production decisions reverted to the brigade and team levels, and eventually most governmental responsibilities were returned to county and township administrations. Nonetheless, the commune system was retained and continued to be the basic form of organization in the agricultural sector until the early 1960s.


text: During the Great Leap Forward, the industrial sector also was expected to discover and use slack labor and productive capacity to increase output beyond the levels previously considered feasible. Political zeal was to be the motive force, and to "put politics in command" enterprising party branches took over the direction of many factories. In addition, central planning was relegated to a minor role in favor of spontaneous, politically inspired production decisions from individual units.


text: The Great Leap Forward's focus on total workforce mobilization resulted in opportunities for women's labor advancement. As women became increasingly needed to work in agriculture and industry, and encouraged by policy to do so, the phenomenon of Iron Women arose. Women did traditionally male work in both fields and factories, including major movements of women into management positions. Women competed for high productivity, and those who distinguished themselves came to be called Iron Women.


text: The result of the Great Leap Forward was a severe economic crisis. In 1958 industrial output did in fact "leap" by 55 percent, and the agricultural sector gathered in a good harvest. In 1959, 1960, and 1961, however, adverse weather conditions, improperly constructed water control projects, and other misallocations of resources that had occurred during the overly centralized communist movement resulted in disastrous declines in agricultural output. In 1959 and 1960, the gross value of agricultural output fell by 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, and in 1961 it dropped a further 2 percent to reach the lowest point since 1952. Widespread famine occurred, especially in rural areas, according to 1982 census figures, and the death rate climbed from 1.2 percent in 1958 to 1.5 percent in 1959, 2.5 percent in 1960, and then dropped back to 1.4 percent in 1961. From 1958 to 1961, over 14 million people apparently died of starvation, and the number of reported births was about 23 million fewer than under normal conditions. The government prevented an even worse disaster by canceling nearly all orders for foreign technical imports and using the country's foreign exchange reserves to import over 5 million tons of grain a year beginning in 1960. Mines and factories continued to expand output through 1960, partly by overworking personnel and machines but largely because many new plants constructed during the First Five-Year Plan went into full production in these years. Thereafter, however, the excessive strain on equipment and workers, the effects of the agricultural crisis, the lack of economic coordination, and, in the 1960s, the withdrawal of Soviet assistance caused industrial output to plummet by 38 percent in 1961 and by a further 16 percent in 1962.


text: Faced with economic collapse in the early 1960s, the government sharply revised the immediate goals of the economy and devised a new set of economic policies to replace those of the Great Leap Forward. Top priority was given to restoring agricultural output and expanding it at a rate that would meet the needs of the growing population. Planning and economic coordination were to be revived- -although in a less centralized form than before the Great Leap Forward—so as to restore order and efficient allocation of resources to the economy. The rate of investment was to be reduced and investment priorities reversed, with agriculture receiving first consideration, light industry second, and heavy industry third.


text: In a further departure from the emphasis on heavy industrial development that persisted during the Great Leap Forward, the government undertook to mobilize the nation's resources to bring about technological advancement in agriculture. Organizational changes in agriculture mainly involved the decentralization of production decision-making and income distribution within the commune structure. The role of the central commune administration was greatly reduced, although it remained the link between local government and agricultural producers and was important in carrying out activities that were too large in scale for the production brigades. Production teams were designated the basic accounting units and were responsible for making nearly all decisions concerning production and the distribution of income to their members. Private plots, which had disappeared on some communes during the Great Leap Forward, were officially restored to farm families.


text: Economic support for agriculture took several forms. Agricultural taxes were reduced, and the prices paid for agricultural products were raised relative to the prices of industrial supplies for agriculture. There were substantial increases in supplies of chemical fertilizer and various kinds of agricultural machinery, notably small electric pumps for irrigation. Most of the modern supplies were concentrated in areas that were known to produce "high and stable yields" in order to ensure the best possible results.


text: In industry, a few key enterprises were returned to central state control, but control over most enterprises remained in the hands of provincial-level and local governments. This decentralization had taken place in 1957 and 1958 and was reaffirmed and strengthened in the 1961-65 period. Planning rather than politics once again guided production decisions, and material rewards rather than revolutionary enthusiasm became the leading incentive for production. Major imports of advanced foreign machinery, which had come to an abrupt halt with the withdrawal of Soviet assistance starting in 1960, were initiated with Japan and West European countries.


text: During the 1961–65 readjustment and recovery period, economic stability was restored, and by 1966 production in both agriculture and industry surpassed the peak levels of the Great Leap Forward period. Between 1961 and 1966, agricultural output grew at an average rate of 9.6 percent a year. Industrial output was increased in the same years at an average annual rate of 10.6 percent, largely by reviving plants that had operated below capacity after the economic collapse in 1961. Another important source of growth in this period was the spread of rural, small-scale industries, particularly coal mines, hydroelectric plants, chemical fertilizer plants, and agricultural machinery plants. The economic model that emerged in this period combined elements of the highly centralized, industrially oriented, Soviet-style system of the First Five-Year Plan with aspects of the decentralization of ownership and decision making that characterized the Great Leap Forward and with the strong emphasis on agricultural development and balanced growth of the "agriculture first" policy. Important changes in economic policy occurred in later years, but the basic system of ownership, decision-making structure, and development strategy that was forged in the early 1960s was not significantly altered until the reform period of the 1960s.


text: The Cultural Revolution was set in motion by Mao Zedong in 1966 and called to a halt in 1968, but the atmosphere of radical leftism persisted until Mao's death and the fall of the Gang of Four in 1976. During this period, there were several distinct phases of economic policy.


text: Until the Cultural Revolution, China had paid dividends to the former capitalist class from the value of property that had been seized in the revolution. "A campaign during the Cultural Revolution ended this practice."


text: The Cultural Revolution, unlike the Great Leap Forward, was primarily a political upheaval and did not produce major changes in official economic policies or the basic economic model. Nonetheless, its influence was felt throughout urban society, and it profoundly affected the modern sector of the economy.


text: Agricultural production stagnated, but in general the rural areas experienced less turmoil than the cities. Production was reduced in the modern non-agricultural sectors in several ways.


text: The most direct cause of production halts was the political activity of students and workers in the mines and factories.


text: A second cause was the extensive disruption of transportation resulting from the requisitioning of trains and trucks to carry Chinese Red Guards around the country. Output at many factories suffered from shortages of raw materials and other supplies.


text: A third disruptive influence was that the direction of factories was placed in the hands of revolutionary committees, consisting of representatives from the party, the workers, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, whose members often had little knowledge of either management or the enterprise they were supposed to run. In addition, virtually all engineers, managers, scientists, technicians, landlords and other professional personnel were "criticized," demoted, "sent down" to the countryside to "participate in labor," or even jailed, all of which resulted in their skills and knowledge being lost to the enterprise.


text: The effect was a 14-percent decline in industrial production in 1967. A degree of order was restored by the army in late 1967 and 1968, and the industrial sector returned to a fairly high rate of growth in 1969.


text: Other aspects of the Cultural Revolution had more far-reaching effects on the economy. Imports of foreign equipment, required for technological advancement, were curtailed by rampant xenophobia.


text: Probably the most serious and long-lasting effect on the economy was the dire shortage of highly educated personnel caused by the closing of the universities. China's ability to develop new technology and absorb imported technology would be limited for years by the hiatus in higher education.


text: As political stability was gradually restored, a renewed drive for coordinated, balanced development was set in motion under the leadership of Premier Zhou Enlai.


text: To revive efficiency in industry, CCP committees were returned to positions of leadership over the revolutionary committees, and a campaign was carried out to return skilled and highly educated personnel to the jobs from which they had been displaced during the Cultural Revolution.


text: Universities began to reopen, and foreign contacts were expanded. Once again the economy suffered from imbalances in the capacities of different industrial sectors and an urgent need for increased supplies of modern inputs for agriculture. In response to these problems, there was a significant increase in investment, including the signing of contracts with foreign firms for the construction of major facilities for chemical fertilizer production, steel finishing, and oil extraction and refining. The most notable of these contracts was for thirteen of the world's largest and most modern chemical fertilizer plants. During this period, industrial output grew at an average rate of 8 percent a year.


text: Agricultural production declined somewhat in 1972 because of poor weather but increased at an average annual rate of 3.8 percent for the period as a whole. The party and state leadership undertook a general reevaluation of development needs, and Zhou Enlai presented the conclusions in a report to the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975. In it he called for the Four Modernizations (see Glossary). Zhou emphasized the mechanization of agriculture and a comprehensive two-stage program for the modernization of the entire economy by the end of the century.


text: Mao's last years included a period of general economic disarray as a wave of strikes, factory slowdowns, and worker absenteeism arose in the majority of major industrial centers, accompanied by an increase in crime, including looting of state granaries. The rationing system expanded to cover more than 80 percent of staple items and consumer goods. However, by 1975 China's economy was performing well according to most conventional economic measures. Although the economy was not on the verge of collapse as some post-Mao historical narratives portray, it nonetheless faced pervasive economic difficulties caused by political instability and the consequences of China's developmentalist model, which prioritized growth in industrial and military capacity rather than consumption.


text: During the early and mid-1970s, the radical group later known as the Gang of Four attempted to dominate the power center through their network of supporters and, most important, through their control of the media.


text: More moderate leaders, however, were developing and promulgating a pragmatic program for rapid modernization of the economy that contradicted the set of policies expressed in the media. Initiatives by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping were vehemently attacked in the press and in political campaigns as "poisonous weeds."


text: Using official news organs, the Gang of Four advocated the primacy of nonmaterial, political incentives, radical reduction of income differences, elimination of private farm plots, and a shift of the basic accounting unit up to the brigade level in agriculture. They opposed the strengthening of central planning and denounced the use of foreign technology.


text: In the face of such contradictory policy pronouncements and uncertain political currents, administrators and economic decision makers at all levels were virtually paralyzed. Economic activity slowed, and the incipient modernization program almost ground to a halt. Uncertainty and instability were exacerbated by the death of Zhou Enlai in January 1976 and the subsequent second purge of Deng Xiaoping in April.


text: The effects of the power struggle and policy disputes were compounded by the destruction resulting from the Tangshan earthquake in July 1976. Output for the year in both industry and agriculture showed no growth over 1975. The interlude of uncertainty finally ended when the Gang of Four was arrested in October, one month after Mao's death.


text: After the fall of the Gang of Four, the leadership under Hua Guofeng—and by July 1977 the rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping—reaffirmed the modernization program espoused by Zhou Enlai in 1975. They also set forth a battery of new policies for the purpose of accomplishing the Four Modernizations.


text: The new policies strengthened the authority of managers and economic decision makers at the expense of party officials, stressed material incentives for workers, and called for expansion of the research and education systems. Foreign trade was to be increased, and exchanges of students and "foreign experts" with developed countries were to be encouraged.


text: This new policy initiative was capped at the Fifth National People's Congress in February and March 1978, when Hua Guofeng presented the draft of an ambitious ten-year plan for the 1976-85 period. The plan called for high rates of growth in both industry and agriculture and included 120 construction projects that would require massive and expensive imports of foreign technology.


text: Between 1976 and 1978, the economy quickly recovered from the stagnation of the Cultural Revolution. Agricultural production was sluggish in 1977 because of a third consecutive year of adverse weather conditions but rebounded with a record harvest in 1978. Industrial output jumped by 14 percent in 1977 and by 13 percent in 1978.


text: Despite political upheavals during the Mao era, China's GNP grew an average of 6.2% annually over the period 1952-1978. The World Bank's first report on China assessed the Mao era positively, citing rapid growth and industrialization as well as the "virtual elimination of the worst aspects of poverty," although it also identified room for improvement.


text: Chinese reformers were more critical, however. For example, Hu Qiaomu's July 1978 report to the State Council, "Act in Accordance with Economic Laws," described the situation of the peasants as grave and estimated that grain output had merely kept pace with population growth.


text: At the milestone Third Plenum of the National Party Congress's 11th Central Committee which opened on December 22, 1978, the party leaders decided to undertake a program of gradual but fundamental reform of the economic system. They concluded that the centrally planned economy had failed to produce efficient economic growth and had caused China to fall far behind not only the industrialized nations of the West but also the new industrial powers of Asia: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.


text: In the late 1970s, while Japan and Hong Kong rivaled European countries in modern technology, China's citizens had to make do with barely sufficient food supplies, rationed clothing, inadequate housing, and a service sector that was inadequate and inefficient. All of these shortcomings embarrassed China internationally.


text: The purpose of the reform program was not to abandon communism but to make it work better by substantially increasing the role of market mechanisms in the system and by reducing—not eliminating—government planning and direct control.


text: The process of reform was incremental. New measures were first introduced experimentally in a few localities and then were popularized and disseminated nationally if they proved successful.


text: The government resumed dividend payments to Chinese capitalists whose property had been seized after the revolution (the practice had been suspended as a result of a campaign during the Cultural Revolution), including with interest.


text: By 1987 the program had achieved remarkable results in increasing supplies of food and other consumer goods and had created a new climate of dynamism and opportunity in the economy. At the same time, however, the reforms also had created new problems and tensions, leading to intense questioning and political struggles over the program's future.


text: The first few years of the reform program were designated the "period of readjustment," during which key imbalances in the economy were to be corrected and a foundation was to be laid for a well-planned modernization drive. The schedule of Hua Guofeng's ten-year plan was discarded, although many of its elements were retained.


text: The major goals of the readjustment process were to expand exports rapidly; overcome key deficiencies in transportation, communications, coal, iron, steel, building materials, and electric power; and redress the imbalance between light and heavy industry by increasing the growth rate of light industry and reducing investment in heavy industry. Agricultural production was stimulated in 1979 by an increase of over 22 percent in the procurement prices paid for farm products.


text: Economist Thomas Rawski summarized China's economic development from 1957 to 1979, writing that "a nation that until 1957 could not manufacture tractors, power plants, or wristwatches now produces computers, earth satellites, oral contraceptives, and nuclear weapons. The technical skills required for industrial development are no longer confined within a few isolated urban enclaves."


text: The central policies of the reform program were introduced experimentally during the readjustment period. The most successful reform policy, the household responsibility system in agriculture, began development in 1979 as a way for poor rural units in mountainous or arid areas to increase their incomes. This system, which came to replace collective farming, maintained public ownership of land and some of the means of production, but made production the responsibility of households. Households still had to contribute to state quotas but could make their own decisions about what to plant on contracted land and could sell via a multi-tier price system that included the lowest price for payment to the state up until the quota, a higher rate for above-quota sales to the state, and market price for crops allowed to be sold at fairs. This multi-tier price system also resulted in price stabilization effects that encouraged production while protecting households from a decrease in market prices caused by the production boom. By 1983, the responsibility system was adopted by numerous farm units in all sorts of areas.


text: Agricultural production was also stimulated by official encouragement to establish free farmers' markets in urban areas, as well as in the countryside, and by allowing some families to operate as "specialized households," devoting their efforts to producing a scarce commodity or service on a profit-making basis.


text: In industry, the main policy innovations increased the autonomy of enterprise managers, reduced emphasis on planned quotas, allowed enterprises to produce goods outside the plan for sale on the market, and permitted enterprises to experiment with the use of bonuses to reward higher productivity. The government also tested a fundamental change in financial procedures with a limited number of state-owned units: rather than remitting all of their profits to the state, as was normally done, these enterprises were allowed to pay a tax on their profits and retain the balance for reinvestment and distribution to workers as bonuses.


text: The government also actively encouraged the establishment of collectively owned and operated industrial and service enterprises as a means of soaking up some of the unemployment among young people and at the same time helping to increase supplies of light industrial products. Individual enterprise also was allowed, after having virtually disappeared during the Cultural Revolution, and independent cobblers, tailors, tinkers, and vendors once again became common sights in the cities. Foreign-trade procedures were greatly eased, allowing individual enterprises and administrative departments outside the Ministry of Foreign Trade (which became the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade in 1984) to engage in direct negotiations with foreign firms. A wide range of cooperation, trading and credit arrangements with foreign firms were legalized so that China could enter the mainstream of international trade.


text: Wage reform was the initial phase of China's labor reform. It added bonus pay to increase workers' material incentives and in 1979-1980 introduced the piece-wage system. Management positions modeled after western conventions were established in state enterprises with additional pay commensurate to rank, thereby increasing internal wage disparities. Management officials also were given the authority to pay workers (instead of wage funds being distributed by the state). Distribution of wages by management instead of the state abolished China's eight-grade wage scale, which had ensured that workers of the same grade received the same wages in all state enterprises.


text: The period of readjustment produced promising results, increasing incomes substantially; raising the availability of food, housing, and other consumer goods; and generating strong rates of growth in all sectors except heavy industry, which was intentionally restrained. On the strength of these initial successes, the reform program was broadened, and the leadership under Deng Xiaoping frequently remarked that China's basic policy was "reform and opening," that is, reform of the economic system and opening to foreign trade.


text: In agriculture the contract responsibility system was adopted as the organizational norm for the entire country, and the commune structure was largely dismantled. By the end of 1984, approximately 98 percent of all farm households were under the responsibility system, and all but a handful of communes had been dissolved. The communes' administrative responsibilities were turned over to township and town governments, and their economic roles were assigned to townships and villages. The role of free markets for farm produce was further expanded and, with increased marketing possibilities and rising productivity, farm incomes rose rapidly.


text: In industry the complexity and interrelation of production activities prevented a single, simple policy from bringing about the kind of dramatic improvement that the responsibility system achieved in agriculture. Nonetheless, a cluster of policies based on greater flexibility, autonomy, and market involvement significantly improved the opportunities available to most enterprises, generated high rates of growth, and increased efficiency. Enterprise managers gradually gained greater control over their units, including the right to hire and fire, although the process required endless struggles with bureaucrats and party cadres. The practice of remitting taxes on profits and retaining the balance became universal by 1985, increasing the incentive for enterprises to maximize profits and substantially adding to their autonomy. A change of potentially equal importance was a shift in the source of investment funds from government budget allocations, which carried no interest and did not have to be repaid, to interest-bearing bank loans. As of 1987 the interest rate charged on such loans was still too low to serve as a check on unproductive investments, but the mechanism was in place.


text: The role of foreign trade under the economic reforms increased far beyond its importance in any previous period. Before the reform period, the combined value of imports and exports had seldom exceeded 10 percent of national income. In 1969 it was 15 percent, in 1984 it was 21 percent, and in 1986 it reached 35 percent. Unlike earlier periods, when China was committed to trying to achieve self-sufficiency, under Deng Xiaoping foreign trade was regarded as an important source of investment funds and modern technology. As a result, restrictions on trade were loosened further in the mid-1960s, and foreign investment was legalized. The most common foreign investments were joint ventures between foreign firms and Chinese units. Sole ownership by foreign investors also became legal, but the feasibility of such undertakings remained questionable.


text: The most conspicuous symbols of the new status of foreign trade were the four coastal special economic zones (see Glossary), which were created in 1979 as enclaves where foreign investment could receive special treatment. Three of the four zones—the cities of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou—were located in Guangdong Province, close to Hong Kong. The fourth, Xiamen, in Fujian Province, was directly across the strait from Taiwan. More significant for China's economic development was the designation in April 1984 of economic development zones in the fourteen largest coastal cities- -including Dalian, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangzhou—all of which were major commercial and industrial centers. These zones were to create productive exchanges between foreign firms with advanced technology and major Chinese economic networks.


text: Domestic commerce also was stimulated by the reform policies, which explicitly endeavored to enliven the economy by shifting the primary burden of the allocation of goods and services from the government plan to the market. Private entrepreneurship and free-market activities were legalized and encouraged in the 1980s, although the central authorities continuously had to fight the efforts of local government agencies to impose excessive taxes on independent merchants.


text: A significant economic debate during this period concerned the approach to price liberalization and whether China should adopt an approach consistent with shock therapy—sudden price liberalization—or a more gradual approach. But in 1986, the latter approach won out. "Confronted with the diverse, authoritative warnings about the unforeseeable risks of imposing the shock of price reform and the uncertainty about its benefits" Premier Zhao Ziyang and the leadership ultimately rejected shock price reform. Zhao had accepted the argument that the basic concern in economic reform was energizing enterprises. By late summer, what started under the rubric of "coordinated comprehensive package reform" had been diluted to an adjustment in the price of steel (although its price was both important had carried symbolic weight) as well as partial tax and financial reform.


text: In 1986, the Contract Labor Law was passed, increasing management's power. Newly hired workers had to sign year-to-year contracts, with the goal of the policy being to reduce and eventually eliminate permanent employment for state employees.


text: By 1987 the state-owned system of commercial agencies and retail outlets coexisted with a rapidly growing private and collectively owned system that competed with it vigorously, providing a wider range of consumption choices for Chinese citizens than at any previous time.


text: Although the reform program achieved impressive successes, it also gave rise to several serious problems. One problem was the challenge to party authority presented by the principles of free-market activity and professional managerial autonomy. Another difficulty was a wave of crime, corruption, and—in the minds of many older people—moral deterioration caused by the looser economic and political climate. The most fundamental tensions were those created by the widening income disparities between the people who were "getting rich" and those who were not and by the pervasive threat of inflation. These concerns played a role in the political struggle that culminated in party general secretary Hu Yaobang's forced resignation in 1987. Following Hu's resignation, the leadership engaged in an intense debate over the future course of the reforms and how to balance the need for efficiency and market incentives with the need for government guidance and control. The commitment to further reform was affirmed, but its pace, and the emphasis to be placed on macroeconomic and micro-economic levers, remained objects of caution.


text: Through 1987 and into early 1988, Zhao's reform agenda focused on combining enterprise contracting with coastal development efforts. In summer 1988, radical price reform again became on the agenda. It provoked a dramatic reaction: inflation spiraled for the first time since the 1940s, and the announced push for price reforms precipitated panic buying, runs on the bank, and protests in opposition to the market reforms. By fall 1988, price liberalization plans were halted and leadership instead focused on price reform, austerity, and retrenchment.


text: Also in 1988, the Enterprise Law was passed. It gave enterprises the authority to make major production decisions (including dismissing workers). Following the law's passage, enterprises were leased from the state to management and became distinct legal entities. Workers in these formerly state-run enterprises lost the protections of being state employees.


text: In 1985, the State Council of China approved to establish a SNA (System of National Accounting), use the GDP to measure the national economy. China started the study of theoretical foundation, guiding, and accounting model etc., for establishing a new system of national economic accounting. In 1986, as the first citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a PhD. in economics from an overseas country, Dr. Fengbo Zhang headed Chinese Macroeconomic Research - the key research project of the seventh Five-Year Plan of China, as well as completing and publishing the China GDP data by China's own research. The summary of the above has been included in the book "Chinese Macroeconomic Structure and Policy" (June 1988) edited by Fengbo Zhang, and collectively authored by the Research Center of the State Council of China. This is the first GDP data which was published by China.


text: The research utilized the World Bank's method as a reference, and made the numerous appropriate adjustments based on China's national condition. The GDP also has been converted to USD based data by utilizing the moving average exchange rate. The research systematically completed China's GDP and GDP per capita from 1952 to 1986 and analyzed growth rate, the change and contribution rates of each component. The research also included international comparisons. Additionally, the research compared MPS (Material Product System) and SNA (System of National Accounting), looking at the results from the two systems from analyzing Chinese economy. This achievement created the foundation for China's GDP research.


text: The State Council of China issued “The notice regarding implementation of System of National Accounting” in August 1992, the Western SNA system officially is introduced to China, replaced Soviet Union's MPS system, Western economic indicator GDP became China's most important economic indicator. Based on Dr. Fengbo Zhang's research, in 1997, the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in collaboration with Hitotsubashi University of Japan, estimated China's GDP Data from 1952 up to 1995 based on the SNA principal.


text: In 1985, industry employed about 17 percent of the labor force but produced more than 46 percent of gross national product (GNP). It was the fastest growing sector with an average annual growth of 11 percent from 1952 to 1985. There was a wide range of technological levels. There were many small handicraft units and many enterprises using machinery installed or designed in the 1950s and 1960s. There was a significant number of big, up-to-date plants, including textile mills, steel mills, chemical fertilizer plants, and petrochemical facilities but there were also some burgeoning light industries producing consumer goods. China produced most kinds of products made by industrialized nations but limited quantities of high-technology items. Technology transfer was conducted by importing whole plants, equipment, and designs as an important means of progress. Major industrial centers were in Liaoning Province, Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area, Shanghai, and Wuhan. Mineral resources included huge reserves of iron ore and there were adequate to abundant supplies of nearly all other industrial minerals. Outdated mining and ore processing technologies were gradually being replaced with modern processes, techniques and equipment.


text: By 1984, agricultural production had boomed following the institution of the household responsibility system, which replaced collective farming. Then-Premier Zhao Ziyang wrote in his memoirs that in the years following the institution of household responsibility system, “the energy that was unleashed … was magical, beyond what anyone could have imagined. A problem thought to be unsolvable had worked itself out in just a few years time … [B]y 1984, farmers actually had more grain than they could sell. The state grain storehouses were stacked full from the annual procurement program.” As the government raised prices for grain and cotton and stimulated the growth of township and village enterprises, household income surged and poverty decreased from 1980 to 1985. Life improved for billions of people in rural China.


text: The agricultural policies responsible for the boom also increased inequalities. Regions with fertile soil, transportation hubs, or big cities were far more able to take advantage of market opportunities.


text: In 1985, the agricultural sector employed about 63 percent of the labor force and its proportion of GNP was about 33 percent. There was low worker productivity because of scant supplies of agricultural machinery and other modern inputs. Most agricultural processes were still performed by hand. There was very small arable land area (just above 10 percent of total area, as compared with 22 percent in United States) in relation to the size of the country and population. There was intensive use of land; all fields produced at least one crop a year, and wherever conditions permitted, two or even three crops were grown annually, especially in the south. Grain was the most the important product, including rice, wheat, corn, sorghum, barley, and millet. Other important crops included cotton, jute, oil seeds, sugarcane, and sugar beets. Eggs were also a major product. Pork production increased steadily, and poultry and pigs were raised on family plots. Other livestock were relatively limited in numbers, except for sheep and goats, which grazed in large herds on grasslands of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the northwest. There was substantial marine and freshwater fishery. Timber resources were mainly located in the northeast and southwest, and much of the country was deforested centuries ago. A wide variety of fruits and vegetables were grown.


text: China was self-sufficient in nearly all energy forms. Coal and petroleum were exported since the early 1970s. Its coal reserves were among the world's largest, and mining technology was inadequately developed but steadily improved in the late 1960s. Petroleum reserves were very large at the time but of varying quality and in disparate locations. Suspected oil deposits in the northwest and offshore tracts were believed to be among the world's largest. Exploration and extraction was limited by scarcity of equipment and trained personnel. Twenty-seven contracts for joint offshore exploration and production by Japanese and Western oil companies were signed by 1982, but by the late 1960s only a handful of wells were producing oil. Substantial natural gas reserves were in the north, northwest, and offshore. The hydroelectric potential of the country was the greatest in the world and sixth largest in capacity, and very large hydroelectric projects were under construction, with others were in the planning stage. Thermal power, mostly coal fired, produced approximately 68 percent of generating capacity in 1985, and was increased to 72 percent by 1990. Emphasis on thermal power in the late 1960s was seen by policy makers as a quick, short-term solution to energy needs, and hydroelectric and nuclear power was seen as a long-term solution. Petroleum production growth continued in order to meet the needs of nationwide mechanization and provided important foreign exchange but domestic use was restricted as much as possible until the end of the decade.


text: Foreign trade was small by international standards but was growing rapidly in size and importance, as it represented 20 percent of GNP in 1985. Trade was controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade and subordinate units and by the Bank of China, the foreign exchange arm of the central bank. Substantial decentralization and increased flexibility in foreign trade operations occurred since the late 1970s. Textiles were leading the export category. Other important exports included petroleum and foodstuffs. Leading imports included machinery, transport equipment, manufactured goods, and chemicals. Japan was the dominant trading partner, and accounted for 28.9 percent of imports and 15.2 percent of exports in 1986. Hong Kong was a leading market for exports (31.6 percent) but a source of only 13 percent of imports. In 1979 the United States became China's second largest source of imports and in 1986 was the third largest overall trade partner. Western Europe, particularly the Federal Republic of Germany, was also a major trading partner. Tourism was encouraged and growing.


text: China's economy saw continuous real GDP growth of at least 5% since 1991. During a Chinese New Year visit to southern China in early 1992, China's paramount leader at the time Deng Xiaoping made a series of political pronouncements designed to give new impetus to and reinvigorate the process of economic reform. The 14th National Communist Party Congress later in the year backed up Deng's renewed push for market reforms, stating that China's key task in the 1990s was to create a "socialist market economy". Continuity in the political system but bolder reform in the economic system were announced as the hallmarks of the 10-year development plan for the 1990s.


text: In the early 1990s, economic challenges increased in rural China. Grain farming became unprofitable due to falling prices for staple crops relative to the cost of chemical fertilizers, water, electricity, and other necessary services.


text: In 1993, the National People's Congress adopted the landmark Corporation Law. It provides that in state owned enterprises, the state is no more than an investor and controller of stock and assets. Pursuant to the Corporation Law, private and foreign investment in such enterprises must be below 49%. The law also permitted state firms to declare bankruptcy in the event of business failure.


text: In 1996, the Chinese economy continued to grow at a rapid pace, at about 9.5%, accompanied by low inflation. The economy slowed for the next three years, influenced in part by the Asian Financial Crisis, with official growth of 8.9% in 1997, 7.8% in 1998 and 7.1% for 1999. From 1995 to 1999, inflation dropped sharply, reflecting tighter monetary policies and stronger measures to control food prices. The year 2000 showed a modest reversal of this trend. Gross domestic product in 2000 grew officially at 8.0% that year, and had quadrupled since 1978. In 1999, with its 1.25 billion people but a GDP of just $3,800 per capita (PPP), China became the second largest economy in the world after the US. According to several sources, China did not become the second largest economy until 2010. However, according to Gallup polls many Americans rate China's economy as first. Considering GDP per capita, this is far from accurate. The United States remains the largest economy in the world. However, the trend of China Rising is clear.


text: The Asian financial crisis affected China at the margin, mainly through decreased foreign direct investment and a sharp drop in the growth of its exports. China's nonconvertible capital account and its foreign exchange controls were decisive in limiting the impacts of the crisis. However, China faced slowing growth and rising unemployment based on internal problems, including a financial system burdened by huge amounts of bad loans, and massive layoffs stemming from aggressive efforts to reform state-owned enterprises (SOEs).


text: Despite China's impressive economic development during the past two decades, reforming the state sector and modernizing the banking system remained major hurdles. Over half of China's state-owned enterprises were inefficient and reporting losses. However, SOEs which operated at a loss sometimes did so for complex reasons, including as a result of policies which deliberately imposed higher income tax and VAT on SOEs than on foreign joint and privates companies.


text: During the 15th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that met in September 1997, General secretary, President Jiang Zemin announced plans to sell, merge, or close the vast majority of SOEs in his call for increased "non-public ownership" ("feigongyou" or privatization in euphemistic terms). The 9th National People's Congress endorsed the plans at its March 1998 session. In 2000, China claimed success in its three-year effort to make the majority of large state owned enterprises (SOEs) profitable. By that year, the state sector accounted for 47% of industrial assets, approximately 50% of government output, and accounted for one-third of urban employment.


text: Following the CCP's Third Plenum, held in October 2003, Chinese legislators unveiled several proposed amendments to the state constitution. One of the most significant was a proposal to provide protection for private property rights. Legislators also indicated there would be a new emphasis on certain aspects of overall government economic policy, including efforts to reduce unemployment (now in the 8–10% range in urban areas), to re-balance income distribution between urban and rural regions, and to maintain economic growth while protecting the environment and improving social equity. The National People's Congress approved the amendments when it met in March 2004.


text: The Fifth Plenum in October 2005 approved the 11th Five-Year Economic Program (2006–2010) aimed at building a "socialist harmonious society" through more balanced wealth distribution and improved education, medical care, and social security. In March 2006, the National People's Congress approved the 11th Five-Year Program. The plan called for a relatively conservative 45% increase in GDP and a 20% reduction in energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 2010.


text: China's economy grew at an average rate of 10% per year during the period 1990–2004, the highest growth rate in the world. China's GDP grew 10.0% in 2003, 10.1%, in 2004, and even faster 10.4% in 2005 despite attempts by the government to cool the economy. China's total trade in 2006 surpassed $1.76 trillion, making China the world's third-largest trading nation after the U.S. and Germany. Such high growth is necessary if China is to generate the 15 million jobs needed annually—roughly the size of Ecuador or Cambodia—to employ new entrants into the job market.


text: On January 14, 2009, as confirmed by the World Bank the NBS published the revised figures for 2007 financial year in which growth happened at 13 percent instead of 11.9 percent (provisional figures). China's gross domestic product stood at US$3.4 trillion while Germany's GDP was US$3.3 trillion for 2007. This made China the world's third largest economy by gross domestic product. Based on these figures, in 2007 China recorded its fastest growth since 1994 when the GDP grew by 13.1 percent. China may have already overtaken Germany even earlier as China's informal economy (including the Grey market and underground economy) is larger than Germany's. Louis Kuijs, a senior economist at World Bank China Office in Beijing, said that China's economy may even be (as of January 2009) as much as 15 percent larger than Germany's. According to Merrill Lynch China economist Ting Lu, China is projected to overtake Japan in "three to four years".


text: Social and economic indicators have improved since various recent reforms were launched, but rising inequality is evident between the more highly developed coastal provinces and the less developed, poorer inland regions. According to UN estimates in 2007, around 130 million people in China—mostly in rural areas of the lagging inland provinces—still lived in poverty, on subsistence wages of less than $1 a day. About 35% of the Chinese population lives under $2 a day.


text: In the medium-term, economists state that there is ample amount of potential for China to maintain relatively high economic growth rates and is forecasted to be the world's largest exporter by 2010. Urbanization in China and technological progress and catch-up with developed countries have decades left to run. But future growth is complicated by a rapidly aging population and costs of damage to the environment.


text: China launched its Economic Stimulus Plan to specifically deal with the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009. It has primarily focused on increasing affordable housing, easing credit restrictions for mortgage and SMEs, lower taxes such as those on real estate sales and commodities, pumping more public investment into infrastructure development, such as the rail network, roads and ports.


text: Major natural disasters of 2008, such as the 2008 Chinese winter storms, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the 2008 South China floods mildly affected national economic growth but did do major damage to local and regional economies and infrastructure. Growth rates for Sichuan dropped to 4.6% in the 2nd quarter but recovered to 9.5% annual growth for the whole of 2008. Major reconstruction efforts are still continuing after the May 12 earthquake, and are expected to last for at least three years. Despite closures and relocation of some factories because of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the games had a minor impact on Beijing's overall economic growth. The Chinese economy is significantly affected by the 2008-9 global financial crisis due to the export oriented nature of the economy which depends heavily upon international trade. However, government economic-stimulus has been hugely successful by nearly all accounts.