_*Economy #_Overview: Beginning in late 1978 the Chinese leadership has been trying to move the economy from the sluggish Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more productive and flexible economy with market elements—but still within the framework of monolithic Communist control. To this end the authorities have switched to a system of household responsibility in agriculture in place of the old collectivization, increased the authority of local officials and plant managers in industry, permitted a wide variety of small-scale enterprise in services and light manufacturing, and opened the foreign economic sector to increased trade and joint ventures. The most gratifying result has been a strong spurt in production, particularly in agriculture in the early 1980s. Otherwise, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy, lassitude, corruption) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals and thereby undermining the credibility of the reform process. Popular resistance and changes in central policy have weakened China's population control program, which is essential to the nation's long-term economic viability.
_#_GNP: $413 billion (1989 est.), per capita $370 (World Bank est.); real growth rate 5% (1990)
_#_Inflation rate (consumer prices): 2.1% (1990)
_#_Unemployment rate: 2.6% in urban areas (1990)
_#_Budget: revenues $NA; expenditures $NA, including capital expenditures of $NA
_#_Exports: $62.1 billion (f.o.b., 1990);
commodities—textiles, garments, telecommunications and recording equipment, petroleum, minerals;
partners—Hong Kong, US, Japan, USSR, Singapore, FRG (1989)
_#_Imports: $53.4 billion (c.i.f., 1990);
commodities—specialized industrial machinery, chemicals, manufactured goods, steel, textile yarn, fertilizer;