The United Nations said in its 2009 World Economic Report that if China was able to reach 8 percent of economic growth in 2009, its contribution to the global economy would be a surprising 50 percent, meaning China was undoubtedly the strongest driving force of global economic recovery for the year. Growth, structural adjustment, reform and livelihood…China's economic performance in 2009 did surprise the rest of the world and also gave hope to people in the midst of the downturn. 

World praise for China's achievements  

At the end of 2009, major media around the world all gave China's economic performance high marks. Le Figaro of France published an article written by Angel Gurria, Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, on November 19, entitled China Helping OECD out of Recession. The article says that China's economic recovery has been confirmed and is spreading to the entire developed world. This should be partly attributed to China's economic vitality.

Handelsblatt of Germany reported on November 17 that, thanks to the Chinese Government's economic stimulus package, the economy had effectively withstood the impact of the international financial turmoil. This is good news for other Asian economies and is also a strong spur to the global economy.

Time magazine, which put forward the theory that China would collapse at the beginning of the year, chose "Chinese workers" as one of the four runners-up for its People of the Year.

From early 2009 to the end of the year, international media sharply changed their attitudes towards China as their suspicion of the Chinese economy changed to praise.

This is undoubtedly attributable to China's excellent economic performance in 2009. At the beginning of the year, China was hit by both declining exports and fiscal revenues, but now its economy is recovering and becoming stable. China's economy realized a big step forward.

If the GDP growth in seven quarters since 2008 is charted, China's economy is a clear rollback of its previous "V" shape.

Zhou Qing'an, Director of the Tsinghua International Center for Communication Studies, said that during the early days of the implementation of a 4 trillion economic stimulus package, international media held different attitudes towards the economy's strength and direction. "Today, China's economy is recovering, and the media have been keeping an eye on it, so its outstanding performance in various areas has certainly been noticed by them."

Domestic demand boosted living standards

As early as November 2008, China's State Council issued 10 measures to expand domestic demand, which made improvement in living standards the top priority. Of the 4 trillion RMB apportioned for the economic stimulus scheme, secure housing, rural living improvements and basic infrastructure construction and health projects as well as culture and education accounted for 700 billion yuan.   

At the end of 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao concluded that China had, in 2009, accomplished two major objectives: Pushing forward reform of the health system and starting pilot programs for farming pensions.

Improving living standards programs were generally regarded as costly in the past but now are both the starting point and the ultimate target of China's economic development.

At the same time, stoking the Chinese' willingness to spend money was also a big question in 2009. During the year, the Chinese Government input huge amounts of capital and formulated eight consumption-stimulus policies to expand domestic demand. These included old for new automobile and domestic electric appliance trade-ins, boosting the sales of these commodities in rural areas by incentives and sharply increasing subsidies for machine purchases for use in agriculture. A series of consumption-stimulus packages pushed Chinese urban and rural residents' consumption passion to a new high for recent years.

In the first three quarters of 2009, total retail sales of consumer goods increased 17 percent. More particularly, China's rural consumption market was stirred up and consumption erupted, exceeding urban consumption for 11 successive months.  

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that at the end of 2009, Asia was leading the world economy out of crisis by stimulating internal consumption. As well, accelerated consumption will probably extend into 2010. In percentage increase terms, China has already left the United States and Europe behind.

Green-oriented Economic Restructuring  

China's economic achievements in 2009 were not only reflected in statistics. Clear solutions to a series of problems in economic restructuring have been put into place. As for China's effort on industrial restructuring, Time magazine praises it as "a green breakthrough."  

Of the 4 trillion yuan economic stimulus package, 370 billion yuan was spent on economic restructuring and technological upgrading. The core target of the "10 major industrial restructuring and revitalization plan" was to eliminate outdated production capability, encourage corporate acquisition and mergers so as to promote independent innovative ability. On March 5, 2009, Premier Wen Jiabao pointed out in the government work report that the country needed to accelerate the transformation of development modes and work hard on industrial restructuring centering on growth and upgrading.

China's economic growth in 2009 lived up to the people's expectation too. In the first three quarters, its GDP hit 21.78 trillion yuan, up by 7.7 percent year on year. At the same time, China's per-unit GDP energy consumption in 2009 dropped by 5 percent and in the first half of 2009, the country's per-unit GDP energy consumption dropped by13 percent compared with 2005. The Chinese Government also said the emissions reductions target of 20 percent for the 11th Five-Year Plan was expected to be realized in 2010 as scheduled.  

Solving "China's economic question is fundamentally a structural problem," said Premier Wen Jiabao at the end of 2009, so China needs to transform its development modes through scientific and technological progress and these are the keys for China's economic development.