This is a best-seller in China and a geopolitical book for our times. As a leading thinker from China, Zhang Weiwei provides an original, comprehensive and engrossing study on the rise of China and its effective yet controversial model of development, and the book has become a centerpiece of an unfolding debate within China on the nature and future of the world's most populous nation and its possible global impact. China's rise, according to Zhang, is not the rise of an ordinary country, but the rise of a different type of country, a country sui generis, a civilizational state, a new model of development and a new political discourse which indeed questions many of the Western assumptions about democracy, good governance and human rights. The book is as analytical as it is provocative, and should be required reading for everyone concerned with the rise of China and its global implications.
Contents:Not Misreading Oneself:A Fast-Changing WorldThe Unusual AscentSurpassing JapanThe GDP ParadoxTo the TopChina's 1+1 > 2:The “Quasi-Developed Countries” within ChinaThe Size of China's Middle ClassThe “Emerging Economies” within ChinaWhy China's 1 + 1 > 2?The Rise of a Civilizational State:China's Rocky Path towards a Nation-StateThe Rise of a Civilizational StateA New PerspectiveLooking at China AfreshThe Rise of a Development Model:Reflections after the CrisesThe China Model May Win OutShaping the Chinese StandardsThe Rise of a New Political Discourse:Political Reform, the Chinese WayDebating Human RightsThe Rise of a New Political DiscourseThe End of the End of History:The Western Model: from India to Eastern EuropeThe Western Model: East Asia and BeyondDebating with Fukuyama: The End of the End of HistoryReadership: Researchers, policy-makers, general readers interested in the rise of China, its model of development and its global impact.