After attaining freedom in 1949 china followed the principles of independence and self reliance and then later started economic and trade exchanges with foreign countries. Initially foreign trade development was relatively slow because of international politics.
Before 1978 china’s trade was conducted under system of state trading where approximately a dozen foreign trade corporations monopolised all foreign trade. under this central plan regime imports were not encouraged much and also exports were allowed only to pay for the imports. its share of world trade has risen three times and its expected that will get tripled by 2020. But since the last 20 years china has witnessed a drastic change in its trade policies and patterns and china has expanded itself tremendously. many foreign trade corporations and some retain rights on some of the products. Licenses and quotas in agriculture and food products, machinery and electronics.
China has recently become a trading nation and its tremendous potential has attracted developed and newly emerging economies which became evident when china joined WTO in 2000.
China’s trade strategy has changed over the years, from primary to manufacturing in 1980’s and 90’s was the decade of mechanical and electronic products. This is the century of high tech IT products rapidly grabbing the market and which are highly in demand , also along with state enterprise private enterprise also engaging in foreign trade. From 80’s to 21st century china’s processing trade has flourished and in this process foreign enterprises have played a major role.
Talking about the 1990s –china’s import grew ten times of what it was before , in spite of too many legal restrictions, china had the potential to attract many investors from various regions including US and EU. This is backed up by recent figures announced by General Administration of Customs