Trade Policy Review Body – Trade Policy Review – Report by the Secretariat – China – Revision, 12/08/2008: “Continued trade liberalization has remained an integral part of the China’s long-standing structural reform strategy, which is aimed at establishing an outward-oriented “socialist market economy” that can deliver sustained economic growth and facilitate poverty reduction. The ongoing structural reforms coupled with unabated export growth has resulted in real GDP growth rates in excess of 10% since China’s previous Trade Policy Review in 2006. As a result, it ranks as world’s third largest economy and the third largest trader. GDP per capita rose from US$1,490 in 2004 to US$2,017 in 2006. The number of people living on less than US$1 has decreased to about 10% of the population. The rapid rise in GDP per capita and decline in people living in poverty demonstrate clearly the value of integrating more liberal trade and foreign investment policies into broader macroeconomic and structural reforms in order to promote economic development.”