Director J. Stapleton Roy explains how recent decades of China's economic growth has spurred positive change in its government. An article adapted from Roy's presentation appeared in The Globalist, Friday, June 03, 2011 and can be accessed here!
Generational Change, Economic Development, and Political Reform in China
China has gone through an extraordinary economic transformation over the last 30 years. This transformation has remade the face of coastal China. It's now spilling over into the interior and it's raised, literally, hundreds of millions of people to an unprecedented level of affluence.
Conventional wisdom, however, shared by many Americans and much of the media, is that China's political system has remained frozen and that there have been no significant political reforms to match those in the economic sphere. This, of course, is nonsense. Political change in China has occurred on a vast scale, in a number of vitally important areas affecting the day-to-day existence of ordinary Chinese.
The Kissinger Institute works to ensure that China policy serves American long-term interests and is founded in understanding of historical and cultural factors in bilateral relations and in accurate assessment of the aspirations of China’s government and people. Read more
