Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
laconically and sardonically summarizing modern China's economic
historymadeitswaylikelightingaroundtheglobeamongChinese
Internet users:
1949: Only socialism can save China.
1979: Only capitalism can change China.
1989: Only China can save socialism after the fall of the Soviet Union.
2009: Only China can save capitalism. (Fenby 2009, 679)
And the trends continue. Today China has the most Internet connec-
tions of any country in the world. By late 2009 China became the
world's largest market for automobiles, surpassing even the United
States. The most popular automobile brand in China is, perhaps some-
what surprisingly, the United States' General Motors. Wealthier Chi-
nese prefer European cars, but China's growing middle class sees
American automobiles as solid and dependable and seems, by and
large, to prefer them over Japanese cars.
China's sustained double-digit rates of annual economic growth
have broad implications both internationally and domestically. China
today is emerging all over the world as a major market for export
growth. A few years ago China surpassed the United States as Japan's
largest trading partner, and by 2009 China beat out the United States as
Brazil's top trading partner. As China becomes wealthier its own
domestic markets for manufactured products, foreign and domestic
travel, and leisure activities will also grow and become increasingly
important parts of the national economy.
Leisure and tourism are up-and-coming growth sectors in China,
and wise investors may want to take note of this. Zhao Ziyang, the
heroic General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party who in
1989 opposed the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen protestors and
was subsequently placed under house arrest for the rest of his life,
loved to golf. In the mid 1980s there were no golf courses in China,
but by 2007 China had the fifth-highest number of golf courses in the
world, and the game continues to grow in popularity.
Three generations of post-Mao leaders have ruled over this economic
transformation of China: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and nowHu Jin-
tao. During the late 1990s Hu Jintao, a native of Anhui (one of China's
poorer provinces) born in 1942, was obviously being groomed to suc-
ceed Jiang Zemin as China's strongman. Hu, a technocrat by back-
ground and temperament, was originally appointed to engineering
posts before his star began rising in the Chinese Communist hierarchy.
