China in the Twenty-First Century: Present and Future

Abstract

What direction is China currently taking? What are its achievements and its challenges? What is the nature of its current economic and social development? Is its system socialist, capitalist, or other? What is its international role? These are some of the questions that were tackled during a two-day international conference held on June 6–7, 2013, in the European Parliament in Brussels, hosted by the European United Left–Nordic Green Left European Parliament Group (GUE-NGL), the Gabriel Péri Foundation (France), OSPAAAL (Spain), and the international network International Correspondence. Present were many representatives of Communist and other Left parties in the world, Chinese scholars affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, members of the European Parliament, diplomatic representatives, and progressive intellectuals specializing in the topic. This report takes into account both the presentations given by participants and the discussions afterward.

Keywords:

• China
• economy
• politics
• socialism
• international relations

Notes on Contributor

Danielle Follett is an associate professor of US studies at the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon, France. She holds a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University in the history of ideas, and a second doctorate from the University of Paris in US studies. Originally from the United States, she is the author of a number of scholarly articles and specializes in nineteenth century history of ideas and transcendentalism. She is a member of the international network, International Correspondence.

Notes

¹ See Scissors (2011). Scissors cites the sources for this information from Zhou and Rabinovitch (2010) and Channel News Asia (2010).

² Average GDP growth rates for the years 1970–1979 and 1980–1989 are available at the World Bank Open Database (World Bank 2013).

³ Data for real GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (1970–2003) taken from Angus Maddison's Contours of the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macroeconomic History (2007, 176, 177, 339, 345); future extrapolation from this data made by Marc Vandepitte.

⁴ Statistics given in a graph in the Financial Times (2013).