China' s investment environment has been improving, and those foreign firms issuing complaints were just sharing growing pains brought on by the country' s economic restructuring, top officials and economists have said.

Could you explain “growing pains”?

My comments:

Children sometimes complain of pain in their joints and limbs. As they suffer no apparent illness, parents call this “growing pains”, telling the children that they are simply growing too fast.

Hence figuratively speaking, when an economy such as China’s grows at a very rapid pace, anomalies abound due to lack of regulations and lax enforcements of them, corruption and so forth.

Hence, it is unsurprising to hear top officials say what they say in the example from above.

In other words, foreign firms doing business in China sometimes have to share the consequences of China’s rapid economic growth, not just cornering markets and garnering profits.

In other words, no pain, no gain.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.