Factbox: China's economic achievements since WTO accession

   Date:2011-12-12wangxin

China commemorated the 10th anniversary of its entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Sunday, with President Hu Jintao pledging to implement a more proactive opening up strategy and open more areas to the world.

China's economy has made leaps and bounds in the past decade, benefiting from reforms and opening-up. Following are the country's achievements in economic and trade areas:

-- China has become the world's second-largest economy, with its gross domestic product value expanding to 40.12 trillion yuan (6.27 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2010 from less than 10 trillion yuan in 2001.

-- China saw its foreign trade continue to grow against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and became the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer in 2009.

The country's trade in goods surged to nearly 3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2010 from 509.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2001, with exports jumping nearly five times and imports up 4.7 times.

-- Foreign exchange reserves soared to 2.85 trillion U.S. dollars as of the end of 2010, up 12 times from 212.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2001.

-- China's overall tariff level has dropped to 9.8 percent from 15.3 percent in 2001 and 43.2 percent in 1986, fulfilling its commitment to the WTO.

-- Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China rose to 105.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, compared with 46.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2001.

In 2009, FDI in China reached 90 billion U.S. dollars, with a much milder year-on-year contraction than the world average annual decrease in foreign trade despite the negative impact of the global financial crisis.

-- China's overseas direct investment increased 40 percent by average annually from 2001 to 68.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, ranking the world's fifth.

-- Industrial production grew rapidly in the past decade, with the industrial value-added output totaling 16 trillion yuan in 2010, up from 4.26 trillion yuan in 2001.

-- Retail sales soared to 15.7 trillion yuan in 2010 from 3.76 trillion yuan in 2001.

-- China surpassed the United States in the annual volume of auto output and sales for the first time in 2009. Its auto sales reached 18.06 million units in 2010, while output rose to 18.26 million units from 2.47 million in 2001, remaining the world's biggest and setting record highs.

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