Economy of China in the context of "Information technology"

East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the world's largest and most prosperous. East Asia borders North Asia to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, South Asia to the southwest, and Central Asia to the west. To its east is the Pacific Ocean.

East Asia, especially Chinese civilization, is regarded as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Other ancient civilizations in East Asia that still exist as independent countries in the present day include the Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian civilizations. Various other civilizations existed as independent polities in East Asia in the past but have since been absorbed into neighbouring civilizations in the present day, such as Tibet, Manchuria, and Ryukyu (Okinawa), among many others. Taiwan has a relatively young history in the region after the prehistoric era; originally, it was a major site of Austronesian civilisation prior to colonisation by European colonial powers and China from the 17th century onward. For thousands of years, China was the leading civilization in the region, exerting influence on its neighbours. Historically, societies in East Asia have fallen within the Chinese sphere of influence, and East Asian vocabularies and scripts are often derived from Classical Chinese and Chinese script. The Chinese calendar serves as the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived.

The Yangtze River, Yangzi River (English: /ˈjæŋtsi/ or /ˈjɑːŋtsi/) or Chang Jiang (simplified Chinese: 长江; traditional Chinese: 長江; pinyin: Cháng Jiāng; lit. 'long river') is the longest river in China and the third-longest river in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows, 6,374 km (3,961 mi) including the Dam Qu River, the longest source of the Yangtze, in a generally easterly direction to the East China Sea. It is the fifth-largest primary river by discharge volume in the world. Its drainage basin comprises one-fifth of the land area of China, and is home to nearly one-third of the country's population.

The Yangtze has played a major role in the history, culture, and economy of China. For thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking, and war. The Yangtze Delta generates as much as 20% of China's GDP, and the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world. In mid-2014, the Chinese government announced it was building a multi-tier transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports to create a new economic belt alongside the river.

Balance of trade is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports of goods over a certain time period. Sometimes, trade in services is also included in the balance of trade but the official IMF definition only considers goods. The balance of trade measures a flow variable of exports and imports over a given period of time. The notion of the balance of trade does not mean that exports and imports are "in balance" with each other.

If a country exports a greater value than it imports, it has a trade surplus or positive trade balance, and conversely, if a country imports a greater value than it exports, it has a trade deficit or negative trade balance. As of 2016, about 60 out of 200 countries have a trade surplus. The world's largest trade surpluses are held by China ($823 billion), Germany ($226 billion), and Russia ($120 billion), while the largest trade deficits are held by the United States ($1.15 trillion), United Kingdom ($271 billion), and India ($241 billion).

The Chinese Century (simplified Chinese: 中国世纪; traditional Chinese: 中國世紀; pinyin: Zhōngguó shìjì) is a neologism suggesting that the 21st century may be geoeconomically or geopolitically dominated by the People's Republic of China, similar to how the "American Century" refers to the 20th century and the "British Century" to the 19th. The phrase is used particularly in association with the idea that the economy of China may overtake the economy of the United States to be the largest in the world. A similar term is China's rise or rise of China (simplified Chinese: 中国崛起; traditional Chinese: 中國崛起; pinyin: Zhōngguó juéqǐ).

China created the Belt and Road Initiative, which according to analysts has been a geostrategic effort to take a larger role in global affairs and challenges American postwar hegemony. It has also been argued that China co-founded the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and New Development Bank to compete with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in development finance. In 2015, China launched the Made in China 2025 strategic plan to further develop its manufacturing sector. There have been debates on the effectiveness and practicality of these programs in promoting China's global status.

The Five-Year Plans (Chinese: 五年计划; pinyin: Wǔnián Jìhuà) are a series of social and economic development initiatives issued by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1953 in the People's Republic of China. Since 1949, the CCP has shaped the Chinese economy through the plenums of its Central Committee and national party congresses. The plenums follow a customary pattern of themes; since the 14th Party Congress (1992–1997), the fifth plenum has evaluated the current five-year plan and outlined the next five-year plan.

Planning is a key characteristic of the nominally socialist economies, and one plan established for the entire country normally contains detailed economic development guidelines for all its regions. In order to more accurately reflect China's transition from a Soviet-style command economy to a socialist market economy (socialism with Chinese characteristics), the plans since the 11th Five-Year Plan for 2006 to 2010 have been referred to in Chinese as "guidelines" (Chinese: 规划; pinyin: guīhuà) instead of as "plans" (Chinese: 计划; pinyin: jìhuà).

The East Asian model (Japanese: 修正資本主義, romanized: shūsei shihonshugi, lit. 'modified capitalism'), pioneered by Japan, is a plan for economic growth whereby the government invests in certain sectors of the economy in order to stimulate the growth of specific industries in the private sector. It generally refers to the model of development pursued in East Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It has also been used by some to describe the contemporary economic system in Mainland China after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms during the late 1970s and the current economic system of Vietnam after its Đổi Mới policy was implemented in 1986. Generally, as a country becomes more developed, the most common employment industry transitions from agriculture to manufacturing, and then to services.

The main shared approach of East Asian economies is the role of the government. For East Asian governments have recognized the limitations of markets in allocation of scarce resources in the economy, thus the governments have used interventions to promote economic development. They include state control of finance, direct support for state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors of the economy or the creation of privately owned national champions, high dependence on the export market for growth, and a high rate of savings. It is similar to dirigisme, neomercantilism, and Hamiltonian economics.