Introduction

In the recent global financial meltdown of 2008 China emerged from the financial crisis as a stronger global economic player. China’s economic growth has since been widely recognized as a key driving force of the world economic recovery and China’s economic and political influence is reaching far and wide. While the Chinese government’s decisive stimulus program in 2008 and 2009 to steer the Chinese economy away from the tsunami effect of global economic collapse was widely credited, China nevertheless faces tough challenges ahead in both keeping the country’s growth sustainable and pushing forward difficult structural reforms in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. These reforms embrace a tough policy agenda, ranging from rebalancing its sources of growth between export-led and domestic consumption-oriented approaches, reforming monetary and financial policies not at the expense of national competitiveness, diversifying export markets, and accommodating rising labor costs in the low-cost growth model, to rebalancing regional development in response to rising inequality, moving from imitation to independent innovation, and pursuing sustainable development. The challenges facing China are not just because of the sheer size of the tasks at hand but also due to an extremely turbulent global economic environment. Given the size of the Chinese economy, the direction and pace of China’s economic growth and structural changes will undoubtedly give rise to far reaching impacts on the world economy. In addition, the way China grows its economy and manages its restructuring has provided plenty of food for thought regarding the varieties of systems that are looking for ways of making sustained growth possible.