Abstract
In the last three decades, China has known a fundamental shift. Indeed, China turned its socialist planned economy into a market economy. The government, through a lot of reforms, is gradually opening its doors to the free market. The entry of China in the WTO in 2001 has forced the government to lower barriers to the free flow of goods, services and capital between nations of the whole world. Moreover, by seeing China's economy growing as quickly as it does, more investors are attracted by this country. China is now integrated in the process of globalisation, and takes part of the Newly Industrialised Economies (NIEs). Globalisation means that the world economy is more integrated and nations' economies are more interdependent. This process is expressed through the globalisation of production and the globalisation of market. The first one refers to a way of sourcing products from countries by taking advantage of their difference in costs and quality of factors of production; and the second one to the lowering of barriers at the entry of most of the countries which conduct trade into the huge global marketplace. As Root (1994) said, "there are no longer domestic markets". Indeed, competitors can now leap import barriers by producing inside the host country.
