3 - Foreign Economic Strategy of China

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The Chinese People's Republic has been consistently developing its foreign economic strategy over the last twenty-five years of reforms and “openness policy”. A basic outline of the strategy and its contents became known publicly in the 1990s as the relationship between the government of China and the elite of Chinese business emigration deepened and intensified. In its present form it is related to the speech that the former President of China Jiang Zeming made at the Third All-China Congress of the People's Representatives in the spring of 2000. The strategy of China's global foreign economic offensive, which became known as the “go global” and “inviting to come” policy was finalized by that time. In the wake of the Congress several publications were issued in China dealing with specific aspects of this strategy. They included excerpts from the Jiang Zeming speech but without any direct reference to it.

According to numerous Chinese publications issued before the sixteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2002 this strategy was directed at transforming China into the most economically powerful nation in the world by 2020–30. Although this target was not formally declared at the Congress, calls to “go global” and “inviting to come” were actually used as political directives. The sixteenth party Congress set the target to increase China's gross domestic product (GDP) fourfold by 2020 since in the opinion of Chinese economists it was such rates of growth that were required to overtake the United States as an economic power.

Preparation of the advanced growth strategy of China was started in the 1990s. It is impossible to state now to what extent this activity was connected with the formation of the World Chinese Businessmen Forum (WCBF). However, it is quite evident that China's government policy and the activities of the WCBF exerted significant mutual influence.