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ZHENG - China's Peaceful Rise
ZHENG - China's Peaceful Rise
Volume 84 • Number 5
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China’s “Peaceful Rise”
to Great-Power Status
Zheng Bijian
[18]
China’s “Peaceful Rise” to Great-Power Status
Indeed, China has achieved the goal it set for itself in 1978: it
has significantly improved the well-being of its people, although
its development has often been narrow and uneven. The last 27 years
of reform and growth have also shown the world the magnitude of
China’s labor force, creativity, and purchasing power; its commitment
to development; and its degree of national cohesion. Once all of its
potential is mobilized, its contribution to the world as an engine of
growth will be unprecedented.
One should not, however, lose sight of the other side of the coin.
Economic growth alone does not provide a full picture of a country’s
development. China has a population of 1.3 billion. Any small di⁄culty
in its economic or social development, spread over this vast group,
could become a huge problem. And China’s population has not yet
peaked; it is not projected to decline until it reaches 1.5 billion in 2030.
Moreover, China’s economy is still just one-seventh the size of the
United States’ and one-third the size of Japan’s. In per capita terms,
China remains a low-income developing country, ranked roughly
100th in the world. Its impact on the world economy is still limited.
The formidable development challenges still facing China stem
from the constraints it faces in pulling its population out of poverty.
The scarcity of natural resources available to support such a huge
population—especially energy, raw materials, and water—is increasingly
an obstacle, especially when the e⁄ciency of use and the rate of recy-
cling of those materials are low. China’s per capita water resources are
one-fourth of the amount of the world average, and its per capita area
of cultivatable farmland is 40 percent of the world average. China’s
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.
[23]
Zheng Bijian
country. By that time, China will have shaken oª 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.”