International Agriculture and Trade Report: China, 2000

Overview

China's economic growth is slowing, primarily due to reduced domestic consumer demand. Growth in China's gross domestic product dropped to 7.1 percent in 1999, the slowest since 1983. Exports, which had risen 21 percent in 1997 and an astonishing 15.5 percent a year on average during 1980-97, came to a near standstill in 1998 and rose only modestly in 1999. East and Southeast Asian countries, which formerly purchased about 60 percent of China's exports, were hurt severely by the Asian financial crisis. Besides cutting back on their own imports from China, many of these countries devalued their currencies, making their exports more competitive with similar products from China.