Is the West prepared for a world where power is shared with China? A
world in which China asserts the same level of global leadership that
the USA currently assumes? And can we learn to embrace Chinese political
culture, as China learned to embrace ours?
Here, one of the world's leading voices on China, Kerry Brown, takes us
past the tired cliches and inside the Chinese leadership - as they lay
out a roadmap for working in a world in which China shares dominance
with the West.
From how, and why, China as a dominant superpower has been inevitable
for many years, to how the attempts to fight the old battles are over,
Brown digs deeper into the problematic nature of China's current
situation - its treatment of dissent, of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the
severe limitations on its management of relations with other cultures
and values. These issues impact the way the West sees China, China sees
the West, and how both see themselves.
There are obstacles to the West accepting a more prominent place for
China in the world - but just because this will be a difficult process
does not mean that it should not happen. As Kerry Brown writes: history
is indeed ending, but not how the West thought it would.