Will the explosive growth of China continue?
Creators: name: Grinin, Leonid
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2018
Subjects: subject: 140303 Economic Models and Forecasting
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: Economics
subject: 140202 Economic Development and Growth
subject: 160399 Demography not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology

description: The role of China in the world economy is constantly growing. In particular we observe that itplays more and more important role in the support of theworld economic growth (as well as highprices of certain very important commodities). In the meantime the perspectives of the Chineseeconomy (as well as possible fates of the Chinese society) remain unclear, whereas respectiveforecasts look rather contradictory. That is why the search for new aspects and modes of analysisof possible development of China turns out to be rather important for the forecasting of globalfutures. This article employs a combination of scientific methods that imply (a) the analysis at thelevel of Chinese economic model; (b) the analysis at regional level (at this level the Chineseeconomic model is compared with the regional East Asian model); (c) the analysis at the globallevel that relies on the modified world-system approach that allows to answer the questionwhether China will replace the USA as the global leader. It is important that the analysis isconducted simultaneously in economic, social, demographic, and political dimensions.As regards the analysis of specific features of the Chinese model as an especial type of the EastAsian model (that is based on the export orientation, capital &amp; technology importation, as wellas cheap labor force), we note as organic features of the Chinese model the totalitarian powerof the Communist Party and the immenseness of resources. As regards special features of theChinese model, we note (in addition to “cheap ecology” and cheap labor force) and emphasizethat China has a multilevel (in a way unique) system of growth driving forces, where, asopposed to developed states, the dominant role belongs not to native private capital, but tostate corporations, local authorities and foreign business. This explains the peculiarities of theChinese investment (or rather overinvestment), which determines high growth rate up to avery significant degree. A unique feature of the Chinese model is the competition of provincesand territories for investments and high growth indicators.As regards perspectives of the global hegemony of China, we intend to demonstrate that, onthe one hand, economic and political positions of China will strengthen in the forthcomingdecades, but, on the other hand, China, assuming all possible future success, will be unable totake the USA position in the World System. We believe that in a direct connection with thedevelopment of globalization processes the hegemony cycle pattern is likely to come to its end,which will lead to the World System reconfiguration and the emergence of its new structurethat will allow the World System to continue its further development without a hegemon.Finally, the article describes some possible scenarios of the development of China. Wedemonstrate that China could hardly avoid serious difficulties and critical situations (includingthose connected with demographic problems); however, there could be different scenarios ofhow China will deal with the forthcoming crisis. We also come to the conclusion that it wouldbe better for China to achieve a slowdown to moderate growth rates (that would allow China to go through the forthcoming complex transition period with less losses) than to try to returnat any cost to explosive growth rates attested in the 2000s.