From Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:
Right from the start of China’s reforms in 1978, its economy has progressed in cycles of first fast-growth and then slow-growth phases. From 2001 through this current writing, China has been in the fast phase of its fifth cycle, the longest of all the fast phases so far.
Despite these fluctuations, China’s economic growth has averaged over 10 percent in real terms since 1990 and almost that fast for the whole period since 1978. On the negative side, however, an analysis of China’s growth cycles reveals that each fast and slow phase since the middle 1980s has disadvantaged the rural economy. By 2005, the gap in per capita consumption between rural and urban areas had basically returned to its 1978 prereform level, after improving dramatically through the middle 1980s and after staging a modest recovery in the middle 1990s. [Full Text]
