What Does China Think?

China’s Ideas

China’s ascent may be this century’s most important event. Vast China has the world’s largest population. It is the planet’s factory floor, rapidly becoming its most gluttonous devourer of energy and mineral resources. It has developed at a blazing rate. Entire cities emerge overnight. Millions of people have moved into its postmodern metropolises, leaving a countryside where life’s rhythm has changed little since the first emperor.

China can change – and is changing – how the world thinks about international affairs, politics and economics. Take the alleged correlation between economic development and democracy. China is the black swan whose very existence disproves the theorem that all swans are white, for China has achieved amazing wealth without yielding any party control over political discourse. However, today’s China is not the China of Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s heyday – an undifferentiated, monochrome, lockstep march directed by an undisputed strongman. Nor is it the China of Mao’s latter-day struggles – a turbulent, chaotic explosion of Red Guards and Cultural Revolution. Indeed, much of China’s intellectual tension comes from trying to balance...