China – Goldmine or Minefield?
...o China. On December 11 2001, China joined the WTO (World Trade Organisation), this is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. Although China is still a developing country with a relatively low per capita income, it has experienced tremendous economic growth since the late 1970s. In large part as a result of economic liberalization policies, the GDP quadrupled between 1978 and 1998, and foreign investment soared during the 1990s. China's challenge in the early 21st cent. will be to balance its highly centralized political system with an increasingly decentralized economic system. Agriculture is by far the leading occupation, involving over 50% of the population, although extensive rough, high terrain and large arid areas—especially in the west and north—limit cultivation to only about 10% of the land surface. Since the late 1970s, China has decollectivized agriculture, yielding tremendous gains in production. Even with these improvements, agriculture accounts for only 20% of the nation's gross national produ...