China's Market Economic System Framework Taking ShapeChinese residents might not be aware of the role the market plays in their daily lives when they are bargaining with peddlers at fairs.However, if they are told that their right to engage in this kind of free deals is part of the benefits gained as a result of China's effort to open wider to the outside world and to build up the socialist market economic system, people may understand it better. The shift of government functions in price management from administrative orders to market regulation, for example, explains how far the Chinese government has gone in building up a market economy. Market-regulated prices now play a role in 94.7 percent of the country's total retail sales, said an official at the State Development Planning Commission, adding that the purchasing price of 83.8 percent of agricultural products and that of 86 percent of capital goods are well under market regulation. The government pricing department has been taking measures to straighten out market order to make sure that prices are set according to market changes, and organize decision-making hearings in a bid to cultivate and improve a fair and orderly market price formation system. Over the past few years, China has promulgated several laws to further regulate market activities in a move to standardize and legalize its market economy. As a matter of fact, the macro-control measures the central government has adopted in recent years, such as the moderately stringent financial policy and the proactive financial policy in line with market changes and the law of the market. The reform of state-owned enterprises, housing, and government institutions has achieved breakthroughs, with the market playing an increasingly important role in the process. The government-initiated strategy to develop the western part of the country is an inevitable choice, as it aims at balanced economic development by giving full play to the resource advantages in the west and the technological, capital and personnel advantages in the east, according to market rules. China's economic performance has turned for the better this year, which, experts say, should be attributable mainly to the fledgling socialist market economic framework. |
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