Charting China's Future: Domestic and International Challenges

Every day and everywhere, China figures prominently in global attention: companies and banks weigh billions in investments; hedge fund managers assess and speculate on downside risks; commodity traders and natural resource producers salivate over China’s energy appetite; intelligence agencies carefully track China’s growing global footprint; militaries monitor China’s growing military capabilities; diplomats grapple with a new assertiveness in China’s diplomatic posture; scholars try to understand the shifting dynamics and sources of China’s behaviour; while journalists track the latest changes in China’s economy, polity, and society. Charting China’s Future provides informed analysis on the complexities of today’s China, and where these complexities may lead, from some of the world’s leading Asia experts. The contributors have provided clear, intelligible, and forward-looking analyses, free of social science jargon and extensive footnotes. Probing into many of the key domestic and external issues facing China today from political, economic and social perspectives the book proffers a forward-looking analysis that will appeal to anyone with a professional, academic or personal interest in the big issues facing today's China and its interaction with the world. Readers will find much to contemplate about China’s future in this volume, and will gain a clearer sense of the key variables and possible trajectories of one of the most consequential countries on the planet.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Whither China Part 1: China’s Political Future 1. China’s Evolving Political Order 2. Whiter the Leadership of China’s Communist Party? Part 2: China’s Economic Future 3. China’s Evolving Economy 4. China in the International Economy Part 3: China’s Social Future 5. Civil Society and Media in China 6. Development and Possible Futures for China’s Legal Regime Part 4: China’s International Future 7. China’s Relations with the Major Powers 8. China and the Developing World 9. China’s Future Role in Global Security Part 5: China’s Future in Asia 10. China Faces Northeast Asia 11. China and Southeast Asia Part 6: China’s Future Ties with Taiwan 12. Relations Across the Taiwan Strait 13. Prospects for Taiwan and Its Impact on Cross-Strait Relations Part 7: China’s Future with Hong Kong and Macao 14. "One Country, Two Systems" in the Hong Kong SAR 15. Macau: Prosperity within Constraints. Conclusion: A Stable or Unstable China

About the Author :
David Shambaugh is Professor of Political Science & International Affairs and Director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program & Center for Northeast Asian Studies at the Brookings Institution.

Review :
"David Shambaugh and his contributors offer an invaluable guide to today's China and its immediate prospects - comprehensive, clearly written, based on deep experience and sober analysis rather than trendy theorising. Anyone with an academic or professional involvement with China will benefit from reading it." Sir Christopher Hum, British Ambassador to China 2002-2005 and Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge "David Shambaugh, as one of the West's leading political scientists studying China, and former editor of the China Quarterly, has been uniquely positioned to call upon leading China specialists around the globe to bring toghether some of the best Western scholarship on China. The authors avoid the temptation to resort to the usual facile generations and present a nuanced well-informed collection of chapters on China's politics, its economics, and society as well as relations with other countries." Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University, USA. "Let us give credit to a publication of brilliant scholars who offer their clear opinions about what the future of China in the next couple of years might be like." - Richard Turcsanyi, Global Politics, January 2013. 'This volume is a clearly written, well-informed, and forward-looking book that helps understand the complexities and challenges of China’s development. Two years after the publication of this reasoned work, the sober prognoses made by Shambaugh and his contributors have generally proved quite tenable and convincing.' - Ding Hui, China Perspectives 2013.