Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1, University of Salzburg, language: English, abstract: "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." Napoleon's words seem harshly prophetic, as the shock waves from China's awakening seem to have reverberated across the world. The impressive economic growth the People's Republic of China has experienced in the course of the last decades has its roots in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping, at that time Chinese Vice Premier, launched a market oriented transformation process which has considerably transformed the Chinese economic system as well as its relations with the world economy and trading system. The key measures of this reform involved first of all the agricultural system, in which was introduced a Contract Production Responsibility System, as a way to foster the individual productivity. Moreover this process also tackled the reform of state owned enterprises and prices liberalisation, two fundamental requirements for change(General Directorate for External Relations 1995, 20)