Chapter Seven. Beyond The East Asian Miracle: Looking Back And Future Prospects For China’s Economic Growth Model

Abstract

This chapter uses the ideas of extensive and intensive growth, used widely in socialist countries, to analyze Kuznets models of early and modern economic growth. It examines Chinas sustained and rapid development over the past thirty years. Since mid-1990s, Chinas export-oriented economic policy has been an important reason behind its extensive economic growth, but these authors believe that this model is not sustainable. In order to maintain rapid growth of Chinese economy, we must accelerate the transformation from extensive growth to intensive growth and from early growth model to the modern growth model. To achieve this transformation, China must accelerate the improvement of market economy, create economic policy that steps beyond the growth pattern that formally supported the East Asian miracle, change its export-oriented strategies and policies, reduce governmental intervention through industrial policy and administrative guidance, maintain economic stability, and stimulate economic entities to actively participate in process of transition. Keywords: China; east Asian miracle; economic growth; economic policy; export-oriented strategies; industrial policy; Kuznets models; market economy