starting in 1984 with a defunct refrigerator factory in Qingdao, a port city in China's Shandong province, founder and CEO Zhang Ruimin built Haier Group into China's largest home appliance maker before launching operations overseas in the 1990s. Hair developed a formal global expansion strategy beginning in 1997, when Zhang announced his "three thirds" goal of having Haier revenue come equally from goods produced and sold in China, goods produced in China and sold overseas, and goods produced and sold overseas. This announcement came amid three decades of booming economic growth in China that began with agricultural reforms in 1978. The reform program then extended to creation of special economic zones for manufacturing and trade, the rise of small collective businesses, and the privatization of state-owned industry in the 1980s. The reforms of the 1990s included tax and currency restructuring and policies to facilitate foreign enterprise, free trade, and the growth of equity markets.