Globalization

It could be said that China boomed because the world wanted it to. China benefited enormously from the wave of globalization that washed the world into the 21st century. The stage was actually set in the Mao Zedong era as an unanticipated consequence of US-China rapprochement. Motivated by a common fear of the Soviets, normalization of US-China relations allowed Mao’s successors to concentrate on development instead of survival. Meanwhile, the East Asian “tigers” experienced miraculous growth in the 1960s and ‘70s, establishing a model for China and generating nearby capital and markets ready to buy and invest. Then, in the 1980s, the Chinese diaspora played a vanguard role in bridging the gaps between Communist China and capitalist East Asia. By the ‘90s, China’s export Leviathan found its sweet spot on the global production and supply chain. China established itself as a pillar of the global financial and currency structure between the two global financial crises of 1998 and 2008, emerging as the world’s largest trading nation, and amassing nearly 3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves along the way. The China boom is one of the great legacies left by globalization at the turn of the millennium.

Deng Understood That the World Had Changed

Period: Emancipation

Deng Understood That the World Had Changed Wu Jianmin US-China Symbiosis Fed the Boom Federico Rampini US and China Are in the Same Boat Yao Yang Share

Wu Jianmin Former Chinese Ambassador to the UN, France, and the Netherlands Wu Jianmin is a professor of International Studies at China Foreign Affairs University and chairman of the Shanghai Centre of International Studies. He also serves as vice-chairman of the Institute of Strategy and Management, Beijing, and is a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Foreign Ministry. Before he became president of the China Foreign Affairs University, Wu served as ambassador of China to the Netherlands, the United Nations Office in Geneva, and to France. Wu was a faculty member of the Salzburg Global Seminar Sessions 450, Russia: The 2020 Perspective, and 458, The United States in the World: New Strategies of Engagement, both in 2008. Click to expand collapse transcript I could read Marshall Chen Yi's emotions. "You guys come to China, you may invade China. The Soviets from the north, India from the west and America and Chiang Kai-shek from the south. We are ready. My hair is going grey. I am waiting for that moment." That kind of statement was indicative of the state of mind of the Chinese leadership. In 1978, in China, we had such an important meeting, the Third Plenum. We decided to focus on the economy, on the modernization. That was a big change, a strategic turning point. In a way, Deng Xiaoping understood that the world had changed. Add New Comment comments powered by Disqus

Cite this Source >> “Deng Understood That the World Had Changed | Wu Jianmin | The China Boom Project.” The China Boom Project. The Asia Society Center on US-China Relations. 1 June 2010. Web. 21 November 2024. <https://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/thread/38/107>. Map the interviews Click on the map to see where inteviews took place