[79] During this time, China also became an industrial powerhouse, moving beyond initial successes in low-wage sectors like clothing and footwear to the increasingly sophisticated production of computers, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles.

[99]: 20  Specific mechanisms implementing government control of the commanding heights of the economy include public property rights, pervasive administrative involvement, and CCP supervision of senior managers.

[110][120] "We do not know the true number of China’s real growth figure", Gao Shanwen, chief economist at SDIC Securities and adviser to the government, said at a Peterson Institute event on 12 December 2024.

[131] An article by Hunter Clarka, Maxim Pinkovskiya and Xavier Sala-i-Martin published by the Elsevier Science Direct in 2018 employs an innovative method of satellite-recorded nighttime lights, which the authors claim to be a best-unbiased predictor of the economic growth in Chinese cities.

[132] According to an article by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, China's official statistics are of a high quality compared to other developing, middle-income and low-income countries.

Their analysis suggests that China’s economic growth has been systematically overstated in recent years due to structural issues and "authority bias" in official data.

[134] The Rhodium Group attributes these discrepancies to several factors, including collapsing real estate activity, declining local government investment, and weak household consumption.

[141][142] In 2015, a report by the International Monetary Fund concluded that China's public debt is relatively low "and on a stable path in all standard stress tests except for the scenario with contingent liability shocks", such as "a large-scale bank recapitalization or financial system bailout to deal, for example, with a potential rise in NPLs from deleveraging".

[144] Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, earlier in 2016, commented that "the ... debt pile facing China [is] an 'internal' problem, given the majority of the borrowings was issued in local currency.

This has created a situation where businesses, faced with mounting competition and poor oversight, take drastic measures to increase profit margins, often at the expense of consumer safety.

This allows local governments to push investment aggressively, both through state-sector entities they control directly and by offering investment-promotion incentives to private investors and enterprises outside their jurisdictions.

These issues, compounded by a slowing economy, a prolonged property market crisis, and insufficient demand for skilled labor, have led many young Chinese to "lie flat" or retreat from the workforce altogether.

A market-based "representative" exchange rate against the U.S. dollar is one of the requirements for designation of a currency as one with Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of China's goals.

China is the world's largest producer of rice and is among the principal sources of wheat, corn (maize), tobacco, soybeans, potatoes, sorghum, peanuts, tea, millet, barley, oilseed, pork, and fish.

[225] To ensure a more even distribution of coal supplies and to reduce the strain on the less than adequate transportation network, the authorities pressed for the development of a large number of small, locally run mines throughout the country.

Authors conclude that carbon emissions are mainly determined by income, energy consumption and trade openness and their findings confirm the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the case of China.

[100]: 18  Internet users in China generate large amounts of data, thereby providing a competitive benefit in the development of machine learning for artificial intelligence technology.

[100]: 18 Mobile payment methods via apps including Alipay and WeChat Pay were quickly adopted in China in part due to the relative lack of credit cards in the country.

[285] According to the list in 2021, China is home to six of the world's top ten cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Hangzhou and Guangzhou in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th spots, respectively) by the highest number of billionaires, which is more than any other country.

[182]: 228  As of 2022[update], China's largest trading partners are ASEAN, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

[300] The completion of its accession protocol and Working Party Report paved the way for its entry into the WTO on 11 December 2001, after 16 years of negotiations, the longest in the history of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In October 2019, Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng promised to further decrease tariffs and remove non-tariff barriers for global investors, he also welcomed multinational companies to invest more in China.

[102]: 139  In its 11th Five-Year Program, adopted in 2005, China placed greater emphasis on developing a consumer demand-driven economy to sustain economic growth and address imbalances.

The RCEP, which includes China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the ASEAN nations, represents about a third of the world's population and 29% of global gross domestic product.

Warner Bros., for instance, withdrew its cinema business in China as a result of a regulation that requires Chinese investors to own at least a 51 percent stake or play a leading role in a foreign joint venture.

According to market consecutive research by the Monogram Group, a Chicago-based advertising agency, in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012, American consumers' willingness to purchase Chinese products across all categories except PC remained the same or became worse during 2007–2012.

Emphasis was also placed on developing transportation in remote rural, mountainous, and forested areas, in order to integrate poorer regions of the country and to help promote economies of scale in the agricultural sector.

[citation needed] Before the reform era began in the late 1970s, China's transportation links were mostly concentrated in the coastal areas and access to the inner regions was generally poor.

The Chinese government has placed emphasis through funding, reform, and societal status on science and technology as a fundamental part of the socio-economic development of the country as well as for national prestige.

[351] A 2023 Australian Strategic Policy Institute study of what it deemed as 44 critical technologies concluded that China leads the world in 37 of them, including 5G internet, electric batteries, and hypersonic missiles.