WORLD POLITICS

At the beginning of the year, the editorial staff of this journalinvited some of the senior research professors of China Institute of Con-temporary International Relations to a pen-discussion to express theirviews on the world's political, economic and security prospects in 1997.We hope their analyses would be of some interests to our readers. As al-ways, the views they expressed here do not necessarily represent the viewsof China Institute of Contemporary International Relations.