Chinese financial system

The socialist market economy of the People's Republic of China is the world's second largest economy by nominal GDP and the world's largest economy by purchasing power parity. Until 2015, China was the world's fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 6% over 30 years. Due to historical and political facts of China's developing economy, China's public sector accounts for a bigger share of the national economy than the burgeoning private sector. According to the IMF, on a per capita income basis China ranked 67th by GDP (nominal) and 73rd by GDP (PPP) per capita in 2018. The country has an estimated $23 trillion worth of natural resources, 90% of which are coal and rare earth metals. China also has the world's largest total banking sector assets of $39.93 trillion (268.76 trillion CNY) with $27.39 trillion in total deposits. China is the world's largest manufacturing economy and exporter of goods. It is also the world's fastest-growing consumer market and second-largest importer of goods. China is a net importer of services products. It is the largest trading nation in the world and plays a prominent role in international trade and has increasingly engaged in trade organizations and treaties in recent years. China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001. It also has free trade agreements with several nations, including ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Korea and Switzerland. The provinces in the coastal regions of China tend to be more industrialized while regions in the hinterland are less developed. As China's economic importance has grown, so has attention to the structure and health of the economy. To avoid the long-term socioeconomic cost of environmental pollution in China, it has been suggested by Nicholas Stern and Fergus Green of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment that the economy of China be shifted to more advanced industrial development with low carbon dioxide emissions and better allocation of national resources to innovation and R&D for sustainable economic growth in order to reduce the impact of China's heavy industry. This is in accord with the planning goals of the central government. Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream is described as achieving the 'Two 100s', namely the material goal of China becoming a 'moderately well-off society' by 2021, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party and the modernization goal of China becoming a fully developed nation by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The internationalization of the Chinese economy continues to affect the standardized economic forecast officially launched in China by the Purchasing Managers Index in 2005. As China's economy grows, so does China's Renminbi, which undergoes the process needed for its internationalization. China initiated the founding of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015. The economic development of Shenzhen is dubbed as the next Silicon Valley in the world. In recent years, government-claimed growth numbers have come under increased scrutiny, with both native and foreign financial and economic observers, as well as Chinese government officials, claiming that the government has been overstating its economic output. Examples include the provincial government in Liaoning publicly admitting that the government had been overstating GDP by 20% when publishing its economic data from 2011 to 2014. Tianjin's trillion yuan GDP claim for 2016 was in fact a third lower, at 665 billion yuan ($103 billion). Some analysts believe China's official figures for GDP growth are inflated by at least 50%. A Wall Street Journal survey of 64 select western economists found that 96% of respondents think China's GDP estimates do not 'accurately reflect the state of the Chinese economy'. However, a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2017 argued in the opposite direction. Regarding the credibility of official data, China's premier (then Party Secretary of Liaoning Province) has been quoted as saying the GDP numbers are 'man-made' and unreliable and should be used 'for reference only'. China's unequal transportation system—combined with important differences in the availability of natural and human resources and in industrial infrastructure—has produced significant variations in the regional economies of China. Economic development has generally been more rapid in coastal provinces than in the interior and there are large disparities in per capita income between regions. The three wealthiest regions are the Yangtze River Delta in East China; the Pearl River Delta in South China; and Jingjinji region in North China. It is the rapid development of these areas that is expected to have the most significant effect on the Asian regional economy as a whole and Chinese government policy is designed to remove the obstacles to accelerated growth in these wealthier regions. There are 33 administrative divisions in China. Below are the top administrative divisions in China ranked by GDP in 2017, as GDP was converted from CNY to USD using a FX rate of 6.7518 CNY/USD. In accordance with the One country, two systems policy, the economies of the former British colony of Hong Kong and Portuguese colony of Macau are separate from the rest of China and each other. Both Hong Kong and Macau are free to conduct and engage in economic negotiations with foreign countries, as well as participating as full members in various international economic organizations such as the World Customs Organization, the World Trade Organization and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, often under the names 'Hong Kong, China' and 'Macau, China'.