Thanks to the country's opening-up policy and the influx of overseas investment, many private companies grasped the opportunity to take advantage of cheap labor costs to realize a rapid accumulation of wealth.
Chinese tourists splashed out more than $165 billion overseas last year to become the world's biggest spenders, a 28 percent rise year-on-year.
They have always been small, close-knit family businesses. And for decades, they were the backbone of the Shantou manufacturing industry.
Victor Chen says he sees cutting his electricity bill as a great way to save money and reduce his carbon footprint, and he has been told installing a solar-energy system might be the best way of doing that.
Two years ago, a Chinese father in central Sichuan province touched national nerves when he openly challenged the value of higher learning by refusing to send his daughter to college.
Sometimes even the best of decisions can boomerang. Burdened with overcapacity, low profitability and environmental issues amid lackluster demand.
Growing up in Scotland, I hit my first golf balls on what we called back then a "corporation" course.
From odds and ends of sewing to used electrical appliances, from primary school and university textbooks, to New Year greetings cards-we do love to collect and then efficiently squirrel away everything related to our lives.
Recently, my teenage son back home in India asked if I could treat him to a Xiaomi Mi4i smartphone, or what he called "the ultimate style statement".
Ken Lee, a young executive of Shenzhen Huaqiang Industry Co Ltd, pointed at a pile of cement sacks said: "Come back in June. You will see here a 5,000-square-meter 'maker' space."
When it comes to business reporting, what I would really like is to read something fresh, something that will give me new insights into China and how it works.
They have been called the "1990s Generation". Young, gifted and entrepreneurial, they are the group of talented 20-somethings destined to set up the corporations of the future.
I felt spoiled during a trip to South Korea in mid-April compared to the last time I was in the peninsular nation a decade ago.
If you have accumulated some cash and feel rich after the value of your small, starter home has appreciated by four or five times in less than a decade.