Economy

Growing pains ... and gains

By Qu Yingpu (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 13:34

When I first saw China Daily in June 1981, I mistook it for a foreign newspaper. And it still puzzles me how my English teacher at a high school in the small town of Nanyang in Henan province, about 1,000 kilometers from Beijing, learned about the newspaper and had become one of its earliest subscribers. Unlike today, news and information then traveled at snail's pace.

I noticed the price: 10 cents a copy, or 30 yuan for a year's subscription. It was a lot of money; 73 yuan was all my parents could give me, to cover my travel expenses, first-semester tuition and fees when I headed for Shanghai Foreign Language Institute, now Shanghai International Studies University, two months later.

Only 16, I got into a tightly-packed train and stood all the way to Shanghai, wondering how my family would finance my four siblings, all in college or middle schools.

Life turned out to be easier than expected. My tuition and fees were exempted and I was granted a 23.5-yuan monthly stipend. Accommodation was free and food was cheap: A large meat ball cost only 8 cents and pork steak, 12 cents. In 1981, the national GDP was only 489.2 billion yuan ($75 billion, a GDP figure Wuhan - capital of Central China's Hubei province - exceeded last year).

After six years in college majoring first in English language and literature, and then in international journalism, I joined China Daily in 1987 as a business reporter covering foreign investment and trade. Each month I would take an hour-long bus ride to Bank of China to write about the latest figures on individual foreign exchange savings.

Foreign exchange was most sought after by the government and citizens. Wealthier people in Beijing tried all means to get foreign exchange certificates to buy butter, cheese and home appliances such as toasters available only at the Friendship Store.

China's foreign exchange reserves were a mere $292 million in 1987, compared with an estimated $3.2 trillion at the end of this year. Ironically, China now has to worry about how to divert risks from the increasingly weak US dollar.

The most important drivers of growth in the 1980s were limiting the role of government in economic activity, and encouraging exports and foreign investment. In 1990, GDP grew to 1.87 trillion yuan, the 10th in the world.

In the first decade of this millennium, China saw rapid development of financial markets and the service industry. Millions joined the securities market and became homeowners. China's own billionaires and conglomerates were born. In 2010, China became the world's second largest economy with a GDP of 39.9 trillion yuan (about $6 trillion).

As for China Daily, it is indeed a "foreign" paper now - it is also printed and distributed in North America, Europe and many parts of Asia.

Qu Yingpu is deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily.