Chinas langer Marsch in die neoliberale Weltwirtschaft

Abstract

Since 1979 China’s trade development has been accompanied and facilitated by neo liberal globalization. However, it did not follow neo liberal road. Until its entry into the WTO in 2001, China resolutely refused to open its domestic markets and ignored trade rules regarded as global “best practice”. While remaining among the most protected economies in the world, it managed to foster trade through a set of free trade arrangements applied exclusively to foreign firms and a few stateowned firms engaged in export processing. But the dual trade regime in China has undergone significant changes, since it embraced neo liberal domestic reforms in the mid-1990s. China’s accession to the WTO was the consequence of a substantial shift in development paradigm from state-led to market-led growth. In this paper the tension between policies of completing market economy and retaining state controls over economic process is discussed. Faced with the increasing internal and external pressures of deregulating economy it is a striking question how and if these contradictory policies continue to shape future development in China.