China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [0]
Translated by Martha Avery
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ChinaEmerging:1978-2008 WuXiao-bo
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Chinese original edition © 2008 China Intercontinental Press and China CITIC Press
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface VII Acknowledgments IX
The Beginning 1
1978–1983
Deng Opens the Door to the World
Where Will the Money Come from? 12
Shenzhen Special Economic Zone 17
Reform at Capital Steel 22
Shooting Stars in the Countryside 27
Commotion and Tumult33
1984–1992
1984, the “Founding Year” of Major Chinese Enterprises 34
A Two-track Pricing Policy and a Trip to Hainan Island 43
Allowing Prices to “Break through the Pass” 52
Harnessing and Rectifying 57
VI Table of contents
Radical Dreams 69
1993–1997
Ruling over Chaos with an “Iron Wrist”
Price Wars
Becoming One of the Fortune 500
Unexpected Changes
Swamps and Landmines 99
1998–2002
Some Hairpins 100 Market Manipulators and the Problematic Stock Market 108
Fly Over the Rainbow 115 The China Threat 123
Responsibility and Reason 129
2003–2008
SARS, Housing Bubbles, and Electricity Panic 130
Trade Frictions 137
Internet Economics 149
Rise of a Great Nation 155
Crossroads 162
Index 168
P R E FAC E
I
am always amazed by the power of perception, that is, by the power of what people perceive things to be. History is a succession of mental images linked by time. Years later, when people recall an era, it is the images that float to mind, those classic moments of a bygone age.
My intention in writing this book has been to extract certain moments and present them as keys to the events that took place in China over the past thirty years. In the last four years, I have written a two-volume book that narrates China’s evolving reality from a business or commercial perspective. This book is a condensed version of those two volumes, and I have also added 250 photographs.
The thirty years from 1978 to 2008 have marked a period of rapid economic ascent for China. China’s abrupt emergence may indeed be the most notable phenomenon in global economics during these decades. Today, as I thumb through the photographs, I am yet again astonished at the changes in China—the photographs tell the story no less starkly than does the text. I say to myself, “Is this really the same China? Did we really do this?” From the photograph showing the blood-red fingerprints of farmersinthevillageofXiaogang,pressedontoadocumentdeclaringtheir determination, I can feel the distress and the resolve of ordinary people. From the image of students at Tiananmen Square unfurling a banner of “Hello Xiaoping!” I can almost hear