1.Introduction:

For the past decades, China has been the best-performing, if not the largest, economy in the world. China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has grown faster for longer than that of any other economy in history. Furthermore, the Chinese economy is now huge, comparable in size and global impact only to that of the United States. In a word, China is now a driver of the world economy, in part because it has benefited enormously from the wave of globalization (i.e. trade), and from its transition to an open and innovative economic entity (i.e. the economic reform that started in 1978). In this project, we tend to visually present the transition and growth of the Chinese economy beginning from the year the new People’s Republic of China was established till today. The visualization concentrates on three aspects: overall GDP, trade and industrial structure.

The economic data for this project is obtained from China Compendium of Statistics. The whole time-series cross-sectional dataset covers China’s 31 provinces (municipalities/ autonomous regions). For the time span, the beginning year is 1949, and the ending year is 2008.

2.GDP & Population

2.1 Overall GDP Analysis

From the first plot, we can see that population has been growing steadily while GDP surged in 1992. It is because Chinese Communist Party’ held its 14th Central Conference in 1992, which marked the initial formation of Chinese Reform and Opening up.

Chinese economic reform is also known as Chinese reform and opening up. This reform consists of a lot of policies in marketing, industries, trade, investment and enterprises, and was started in 1978. Chinese economic reform couldn’t be finished in several years. It had been divided into several steps, from agricultural reform to secondary and tertiary industries, from rural region to urban region, from coastal areas to middle mainland China. From 1978 to 1992, Chinese economic reform is in its initial stage with limited development results. In 1992, Chinese Communist Party held its 14th central conference, which marks a new stage of economic reform. With more economic development policies, government support and some political reform policies, economic reform had shown up more apparent improvements. Coastal area opening up had been developed to fully opening up. More trade, investment and government support led to higher and faster economic developments. References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform#1978–84

2.2 GDP and Population over Differet Areas

For thisplot, we displayed population and GDP over all provinces in one plot. The size of circles indicates GDP size. The circles in the same color are from same areas, like East, South, North.

Some provinces have outstanding performances, including Guangdong, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang. All of them are from East and South coastal provinces. Henan has the largest population.

We also plotted a fitting line. It seems that population and GDP is related in linear regression. Overall, larger population indicates bigger GDP size. However, the actual situations of each province also matter.

3.Mapping

3.1 Maps of Provincial GDP and GDP Growth Rate

In this section, we draw maps to complement our understanding on China’s economic condition.

## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile 
## Source: "china_shapefile", layer: "bou2_4p"
## with 925 features
## It has 7 fields
## Integer64 fields read as strings:  BOU2_4M_ BOU2_4M_ID

This is a broad image of China’s economic condition in 2008. Notice that the circle size indicates the overall GDP amount of that province, and the circle color indicates the GDP growth rate with the benchmark year of 1978. Generally, large and successful economic entities lie in the east coast of China.

3.2 Maps on Imprt/Export

In 1992, almost all provinces have large trade surplus, especially those along the coast. The western part of China, however, is not as competitive as its counterpart.

3.3 Maps on Industry Structure

These maps show the distribution of China’s three sectors. Southwest and central part of China are productive in the primary sector. Industrial bases are clustered in the northern part. Finally, only Beijing and Shanghai are financial hubs. Interestingly, Tibet has a high tertiary sector GDP because it is a hot tourism destination.

4.Import/Export

4.1 Overall Import/Export

In this graph, we can see that before 1985, export and import of China were close to 0. Then at the year of 1993, both of them began to increase sharply. They have been close to each other for the whole time, until sometime after 2004, export began to increase faster, leaving the gap between two lines larger and larger.

4.2 The Effect of Chinese Economic Reform

Let’s divide this graph into two parts by taking the year of 1978 as the demarcation point. 1978 marks the beginning of Chinese Economic Reform, which is one of the most important enactments in Modern Chinese history. We can see that before 1978, the two lines fluctuated a lot, but absolute values remained fairly small. While after 1978, they began to increase, first smoothly then sharply, especially after 2000. This may have something to do with China’s joining the WTO, which happened in 2001.

4.3 Net Export?

The overall trend of net export appeared a similar pattern. Before 1993 it stayed very close to 0. While after 2004, the increase was so fast that the amount of net export actually quadrupled in only 5 years.

4.4 Net Export by Region

When looking at net export by economic region, we can see that coastal area accounts for most of the net export of China. Beijing, however, is pretty special, since its net export was always negative, and constantly decreasing after Chinese Economic Reform. The reason behind is hard to conclude, but one possible reason is that Beijing is a city that highly depends on the tertiary industry. Firms have to constantly acquire new technologies from overseas to stay competitive.

5.GDP by Region

6.Industry Structure

6.1 Chinese Industry Structure Change over years

Above are the plots of the Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Industry of Growth and we enlarged the plots before and after 1978, the year we had Chinese Economic Reform. Also we added a line of year on 1992, which it begins to dispaly exponential growth. Because it take times to show the results as policies went forward. We can see the rapid development after 1992.

6.2 Proportion of Each Industry Make Up For The Yearly Total GDP

Primary industry is declining for the proportion, while secondary industry is growing up. Now, the dominant industry is secondary industry. Chinese policy of transferring from traditional agricultural country to modern industrial country has received a big success.

7.Policy Study

7.1 Text Mining of the Government Report of 2002 (One Year After China Joined WTO)

From the mapping section we now know that the western region was underdeveloped, at least in 1992. The Chinese government was aware of this problem. In the year of 2000, the central government launched the “Western Development” plan. The authority started to paying attention to the western China. This can be demonstrated by the frequent appearance of the words “western region” in the 2002 government report.

We know that the western region was underdeveloped. Obviously, the Chinese government was aware of this problem as well. So in the year of 2000, China launched a “Western Development” plan. The authority started to paying attention to western China. This can be demonstrated by the frequent appearance of the words “western region” in the 2002 government report.

8.Summary

In this project, we have presented the evolution of the Chinese economy, who ultimately manages to transition into a Leviathan. Our analysis consists of three parts: overall GDP, trade, and industrial structure. The mapping and the policy study sections are added to deepen our comprehension of the abstract economic phenomena. In general, we have three findings. First, China’s population and GDP grow in the same pattern, but the national GDP starts to increase rapidly beginning from 1992. Second, horizontally and spatially speaking, China has an unbalanced development. In terms of GDP and trade surplus, the eastern China outperforms the western part. Finally, China’s industrial structure has experienced great changes. In the past 60 years, the country’s dominant industry has changed from the raw materials sector to the manufacturing sector. The tertiary sector is dominant in cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Tibet.