European Business in China Position Paper 2019/2020 - 欧盟企业在中国建议书 2019/2020 Go back »

  • Published on:
    2019-09-24
  • Category:
    Position Paper

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Coming out of the failure of the centrally-planned economic model used in the first three decades of the People’s Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping seized the opportunity presented by uncertainty to blaze a trail, undertaking bold and daring reform and opening-up measures, beginning in 1978.

When some in China began to question the merits of opening up, Deng further pushed China’s economic liberalisation with his Southern Tour in 1992, laying the foundation for a major wave of foreign investment into the market. Although Deng’s passing brought another moment of anxiety for the Chinese economy, Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji picked up the torch, launching extensive liberalisation and state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform in 1998, and setting up China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.

This sent a clear signal to the international business community: China’s leaders are adept at handling moments of economic crisis and uncertainty, and using them to quickly advance economic liberalisation.

China now stands on the cusp of a new and different type of economic crisis, as growth slows while regulators attempt to rein in debt and policymakers seek to pull the appropriate levers to further boost productivity and innovation.1 This could be the moment for China’s leaders to emulate their predecessors, and again seize the opportunity presented by this crisis to take several large steps forward.