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Bijan. (2005) - China's "Peaceful Rise" To Great-Power Status PDF
Bijan. (2005) - China's "Peaceful Rise" To Great-Power Status PDF
Bijan. (2005) - China's "Peaceful Rise" To Great-Power Status PDF
2005
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foreign affairs
Zheng Bijian
cultivatable farmland is 40 percent of the world average. Chinas oil, natural gas, copper, and aluminum resources in per
capita terms amount to 8.3 percent, 4.1 percent, 25.5 percent,
and 9.7 percent of the respective world averages.
SETTING THE PRIORITIES
For the next few decades, the Chinese nation will be preoccupied with securing a more comfortable and decent life for its
people. Since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, held in 1978, the
Chinese leadership has concentrated on economic development.
Through its achievements so far, China has blazed a new strategic path that suits its national conditions while conforming
to the tides of history. This path toward modernization can be
called the development path to a peaceful rise. Some emerging powers in modern history have plundered other countries
resources through invasion, colonization, expansion, or even
large-scale wars of aggression. Chinas emergence thus far has
been driven by capital, technology, and resources acquired
through peaceful means.
The most significant strategic choice the Chinese have made
was to embrace economic globalization rather than detach
themselves from it. In the late 1970s, when the new technological revolution and a new wave of economic globalization were
unfolding with great momentum, Beijing grasped the trend
and reversed the erroneous practices of the Cultural Revolution. On the basis of the judgment that Chinas development
would depend on its place in an open world, Deng Xiaoping
and other Chinese leaders decided to seize the historic opportunity and shift the focus of their work to economic development.
They carried out reforms meant to open up and foster domestic
markets and tap into international ones. They implemented the
household contracting system in rural areas and opened up 14
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foreign affairs
Zheng Bijian
shortage of resources poses the first problem. The second is
environmental: pollution, waste, and a low rate of recycling
together present a major obstacle to sustainable development.
The third is a lack of coordination between economic and social
development.
This last challenge is reflected in a series of tensions Beijing
must confront: between high GDP growth and social progress,
between upgrading technology and increasing job opportunities, between keeping development momentum in the coastal
areas and speeding up development in the interior, between fostering urbanization and nurturing agricultural areas, between
narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor and maintaining economic vitality and efficiency, between attracting
more foreign investment and enhancing the competitiveness
of indigenous enterprises, between deepening reform and preserving social stability, between opening domestic markets and
solidifying independence, between promoting market-oriented
competition and taking care of disadvantaged people. To cope
with these dilemmas successfully, a number of well-coordinated
policies are needed to foster development that is both faster and
more balanced.
The policies the Chinese government has been carrying out,
and will continue to carry out, in the face of these three great
challenges can be summarized as three grand strategiesor
three transcendences.
The first strategy is to transcend the old model of industrialization and to advance a new one. The old industrialization was
characterized by rivalry for resources in bloody wars and by
high investment, high consumption of energy, and high pollution. Were China to follow this path, it would harm both others and itself. China is instead determined to forge a new path
of industrialization based on technology, economic efficiency,
low consumption of natural resources relative to the size of
its population, low environmental pollution, and the optimal
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foreign affairs
Zheng Bijian
Chinas surplus of rural workers, who have strong aspirations
to escape poverty, is another force that is pushing Chinese society into industrial civilization. About ten million rural Chinese
migrate to urban areas each year in an orderly and protected
way. They both provide Chinese cities with new productivity and new markets and help end the backwardness of rural
areas. Innovations in science and technology and culture are
also driving China toward modernization and prosperity in the
twenty-first century.
The Chinese government has set up targets for development
for the next 50 years. This period is divided into three stages. In
the first stage2000 to 2010total GDP is to be doubled. In
the second stage, ending in 2020, total GDP is to be doubled
again, at which point Chinas per capita GDP is expected to
reach $3,000. In the third, from 2020 to 2050, China will continue to advance until it becomes a prosperous, democratic,
and civilized socialist country. By that time, China will have
shaken off underdevelopment and will be on a par with the
middle rung of advanced nations. It can then claim to have
succeeded in achieving a peaceful rise.
IMPACT ON THE WORLD
Chinas peaceful rise will further open its economy so that its
population can serve as a growing market for the rest of the
world, thus providing increased opportunities forrather than
posing a threat tothe international community. A few figures
illustrate Chinas current contribution to global trade: in 2004,
Chinas imports from members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations increased by 33.1 percent, from Japan by 27.3
percent, from India by 80 percent, from the European Union
by 28 percent, and from the United States by 31.9 percent.
China is not the only power that seeks a peaceful rise. Chinas economic integration into East Asia has contributed to the
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foreign affairs