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| Content | | | | What Does China Think | Author: Mark Leonard
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2008
Commonly characterized as a juggernaut only focused on economic growth, China is actually driven by a lively, far-reaching debate over its future, argues Mark Leonard in his inquisitive study. To do this, Mark Leonard, who wrote "Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century", traveled in China and interviewed many of China`s leading thinkers on politics and economics. A number of these scholars have advanced degrees from American universities.
Leonard divides Chinese intellectuals into a New Right that wants to extend laissez-faire market reforms and an increasingly influential New Left that decries rising inequality, corruption and environmental destruction and wants a strong government to rein in capitalist elites and protect workers. Meanwhile, political reformers push cautiously for local and Communist Party elections against a consensus that associates democracy with chaotic mob rule or national dismemberment. China`s foreign policy is split between liberal internationalists and the ironically tagged neo-comms who contend that China must be ready to use force against its enemies.
Leonard notes that these ideological divisions resemble those in Western countries, but emphasizes the distinctiveness of Chinese ideas, like the concept of the deliberative dictatorship of a one-party state that stays responsive to popular pressures, or a Walled World where globalization enhances rather than erodes the autonomy of national governments.
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