ABSTRACT
Only the coming years will provide the definitive answers to these questions. China in the first decades of the twenty-first century either will or will not be a newly industrialized economy. What can be done now is to look back at the fundamental forces at work on the Chinese economy over this past decade and try to understand why the policy reforms begun in the late 1970s had the impact that they did. With an understanding of what was accomplished and why, to the extent that such an understanding is possible, one is on a firmer if still uncertain foundation when talking about the future.
