The West No Longer Owns Modernity

China's remarkable progress has shown that modernity does not only belong to the West. At the same time, China's modernization has been largely fueled by direct investment of foreign firms which also dominate key technologies and critical positions in the global supply chain. In this section we get the real facts on the interpenetration of China and the global economy. A leading Chinese entrepreneur and thinker puts modernization with Chinese characteristics in historical perspective. One of China's leading dissidents assesses the arrest of Ai Weiwei.     

Post‐Globalization

Globalization has so thoroughly transformed the world that we may now be entering a new phase: post‐globalization. This phase is characterized less by a flattening of old differences than the appearance of new ones.     

Short‐termism Is Undermining America

The United States accuses China of subsidizing its entire export economy through artificially undervaluing its currency. China accuses the United States of fiscal profligacy while flooding the world with easy credit to keep its economy afloat. This dispute reflects the reality that the world's two largest economies are built on opposite dynamics of production and savings vs. consumerism and debt. In Europe, the wages of unsustainable debt that financed the welfare state have also come due. Rebalancing the global economy in this context is not only a matter of fixing exchange or interest rates and extending the retirement age. It must also involve a recalibration of democracy in both East and West. Two Nobel economists, the Greek prime minister, a ranking Chinese economist and the former chief economist of the IMF address these issues.