As China's Two Sessions, the most important event in the country's annual political calendar gets underway, the economy will be one of the focuses.

China has transformed its economic situation over the past decades and the changes just with in the last ten years have been dramatic.

World's No 2 economy 

In the past decade the Chinese economy has consolidated its position as the second biggest contributor to global GDP, pulling away from Japan and closing in on the U.S.

Biggest exporter

 

The country remains the factory of the world, growing its volume of exports and increasingly moving to higher-value production.

Business growth

 

Investors in its stock markets have seen the value of their shares more than treble in ten years.

Rising pay

But almost everyone has benefited, with earnings rising across the board and the gap between rural and urban workers narrowing. In 2021, President Xi Jinping claimed that the country had eradicated extreme poverty.

Innovation

The number of patents filed is an indication of how much innovation is going on in an economy. China saw an increase of more than 300 percent over ten years, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Modernization

And over that time, the makeup of the economy has also evolved, with services taking over from industry as the main driver.