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Economic Growth Uplifts People's Living Standard
Family cars, overseas holidays, mobile phones and an extra apartment for rent are some of the things that people could only dream about in China in the past but are now beginning to appear on the shopping list of a growing number of Chinese people.
Wang Huijiong, a research fellow with the Development Research Center of the State Council, the central government of China, said people in China earn far more money today than they used to, thanks to reform and open policies initiated in 1978 that have made China the fastest-growing economy in the world since.
The country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) totaled 8.94 trillion yuan (about one trillion U.S. dollars) last year, bringing the country's per capita income up to 800 U.S. dollars, he said.
That means the average income of the Chinese people is now four times that in 1980, said Wang, a member of the Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, in session here since last Saturday.
China has emerged as one of the world's biggest telecommunications country with more than 100 million households having fixed-line phones and 43 million people being subscribers to mobile telephony, he said.
Guo Peiying, an economist, said that people across the country have benefited from moves taken by the central government over the past years to break monopoly over power supply, telecom services, oil and aviation industries, forcing them to cut prices for their products and services many times over.
Wang expressed belief that people in China will enjoy better material and culture life in the coming five years.
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