Current Chinese economic strategies have blast the country into the world economy at full speed. While China's economy had been growing at nine percent a year over the past ten years, which led to China's gross domestic product to rise to the seventh in the world. However, with 1.3 billion people China remains a market with great potential for U.S. exporters. U.S. exports to China grew a meager two percent in 1996, but increased by 6.9 percent in 1997. The strongest growth in U.S. exports to China was in the services sector, which showed a positive trade balance in 1997 of $1.1 billion.In 1979 the Chinese have implemented numerous economic and political tactics to open the Chinese marketplace to the rest of the world. Just a few areas China's government is addressing are agricultural technology, the medical market, and infrastructures, like telecommunications, transportation, and the construction industry. Chinese reform measures even anticipated the rush of foreign investment by opening newly expanded industries to out-of-country investors. Effects of this sudden change in economic strategy by a world power can be felt by practically every nation of the globe involved in international trade. The change in the amount of imports and exports to and from China will increase the demand on countless markets, from automobile, to petrochemical, to pharmaceuticals, and optical fiber. Also, with all the foreign investment China is receiving, the socialistic republic will only grow more and more interdependent upon the world economy. However, the impressive growth rate of China's economy is not without its shortcomings. Problems such as inflation and inefficient state-owned enterprises plague the rise of the Chinese economy.In spite of this, China remains an extremely difficult market with significant barriers to sales by U.S. firms. While U.S. exports to China grew, China's exports to the U.S. grew even faster. The 1997 U.S. trade deficit with...
