Dragon Rising: Contentious Dynamics in Chinese Politics

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century, China has already progressed far along a path of rapid domestic development and regional political and economic importance. The magnitude of its success, achieved through a policy of managed and controlled integration with the world economy, has forced a significant re-categorization of its development strategy as a model of societal transformation essentially without precedent. What has the response been to this re-categorization? To what extent is it justified? In what ways does it challenge mainstream economic thinking? The extraordinary economic performance of the People’s Republic has been driven by changes in economic policy that have given increasing scope to market forces. Accordingly, two conflicting sets of priorities appear to have arisen as the Chinese Communist Party has gradually shifted the foundations of its authority from the symbolic and ideological to the pragmatic and the material. On the one hand, there continues to exist an explicit attachment to the strengthening of the nation-state; on the other, an implicit and growing commitment to the decentralizing priorities of the global market economy. What tools have been deployed by the Chinese leadership to tackle this apparent dichotomy and through what institutional avenues has the growing plethora of diverging interests been articulated and addressed? On the international economic front, China’s accession to the WTO surely presents the world trading system with opportunities, but also the challenge of integrating a market with strong structural, behavioural and cultural constraints. China has to be more and more aware of the new system to which it has become a member and which implies state international liability in the event of non-compliance with its obligations, such as respecting transparency requirements and WTO legal and administrative policies. What observations can be made five years after China’s accession? To what extent could the lack of stable rules defining relations between the central authority and the increasingly powerful local entities undermine the good intentions of the Chinese central government? Finally, the panel will explore how internal developments within China affect the way in which China relates both to the US and to the rest of East Asia. While China’s growth entails a significant eastward shift in geopolitical power, its multilateralism continues to be premised on a hard conception of state sovereignty which precludes compromise on territorial issues such as the South China Sea disputes and Taiwan. In this context, although Chinese leaders continue to pay tribute to the long-established concept of harmony (he) in the implementation of the country’s foreign policy, they are equally apt to stress its coessential “centripetal” connotations. As China grows in international stature this is likely to cause dangerous tensions with the pre-existing US hegemon.

Title	Details
The Market and the Hearty: How Legal Reforms in the PRC are Used to Fit the Family for the Service of the Economy	View Paper Details
Five Years of China's WTO Membership	View Paper Details
Beyond the Myth of Separation Between State and Markets: The Success of Township and Village Enterprises in China	View Paper Details
China in the era of globalization: the development of the concept of economic security	View Paper Details