Abstract
The economy of China is particularly interesting to look at, because China was still over two decades ago a very poor country, whose planned economy didn't allow any improvement for its citizens' standards of living. But after a series of reforms oriented towards the market and initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, China has become one of the greatest examples of economic successes after World War II.
Its economic growth has reached an average 10% per year since then, and the considerable growth of Chinese export in the global market is the most spectacular illustration of China's economic success these recent years. China is a major demographic power, with 1.3 billion inhabitants, and the third largest economy in the world in terms of GDP (US$2.6 billion in 2006) . Even if the country is now facing the global economic slowdown due to the aftermath of the financial crisis, its GDP grew 9% in 2008 from the previous year .
Since the middle of the 1980s, China has liberalized its policies related to trade and foreign investments. Its economy is now almost as open as most of WTO's countries. The country entered this organization on December 11th 2001, after a long negotiation process, which marked the outcome of its opening strategy on the world market. Thanks to both increase in the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the growing China's participation in international trade, the country has known an outstanding economic development. So much so that China no longer belongs to the group of low-income developing countries in the world and, since the end of the 1970s, some 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty, according to the IMF.
We will study here the economic reforms that China performed to make this possible, then we will examine China's export activities in the world trade and the reason why it has become a major export country, and finally we will look at the stakes this country is facing in this crisis context.
