NBDL - Nottingham Business Development

With the traditional historical records dating back to 5,000 years ago and a prehistory culture stretching back 300,000 to 550,000 years (Beijing Zhoukoudian fossils), China is one of the earliest centres of human civilisation. Inventions such as paper, gunpowder, the compass and printing make up the foundation of the modern world originated in China.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949. Since 1978, China government has been reforming its economy from a centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy - agricultural work has been shifted from an old system of collectivisation to household responsibility system; small-scale enterprise in services and light manufacturing has been permitted and economy has been opened to increase foreign trade and foreign investment. Now China is one of the world's top exporters and is attracting record amounts of foreign investment. In turn, it is investing billions of dollars abroad. China now has the world's fastest-growing economy and is undergoing what has been described as a second industrial revolution.

The country’s main industries are iron, steel, coal, machinery, light industrial products, armaments and textiles. The automobile industry is expected to grow rapidly in the coming decade, as is the petrochemical industry. Machinery and electronic products have become China’s main exports - 25 percent of the world’s washing machines, 50 percent of the world’s cameras and 90 percent of the world’s toys are made in China. At the end of 2006, China’s global trade exceeded $1.758 trillion, and it had already ranked the third worldwide in trading by the end of 2004, following the USA and Germany.Japan, USA, South Korea, Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, and the Netherlands are China’s primary trading partners.

Becoming an economic and technological superpower is China’s ambition. However, technology and innovation in China has not grown on a truly global, commercially significant scale. Being aware of this, the Chinese government has invested heavily in its science and innovation sector to support its best universities, special zones and science parks nationwide in R&D development. The growth rate of the spending has been fivefold from 20 billion yuan (£1.33b) to 100 billion yuan (£6.66b) over the last 10 years, and as a proportion of GDP it has grown fastest in China in the last 5 years from 1% to just over 1.4%. In the country’s 11th 5-year programme (2006-2010), a goal of transforming the country to an ‘Innovative State’ has been announced.

If you would like more information about China and the China market, please click on the following site East Midlands China Business Bureau China Intelligence

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