During the past decade, China's economic growth has averaged 8-9 per cent a year and has witnessed extensive economic expansion with massive foreign investment. Even during the current global downturn, China has been the primary driver behind recovering of global economy. China has set itself the target of-according to its long-term social and economic development plan-achieving by 2020 a fourfold growth in GDP compared to that in 2000. Despite this goal, there are several reasons for concern in domestic contexts, the reason being that there are a number of risks and uncertainties that threaten to undermine the sustainability of China's domestic development, such as an environmental problem, rise in energy demands and the massive unemployed population. What is more, rebalancing growth between urban and rural areas, between rich and poor people and between ethnic majority and minority will depress domestic demand and could feed social instability.
From the political point of view, on the other hand, the Chinese third and fourth leaderships view the development of economic processes as necessitating a strong government-this is perceived as being instrumental in laying the foundation for an economic take-off. In other words, China has prioritized a paradigm of economic reforms combined with strong governmental control, albeit, its control is gradually getting weaker. There is a trend that every new leader in China since Mao Zedong has shown weaker leadership and charisma in comparison with their predecessors, so the next generation of leaders will also be in line with this trend and will increasingly have to take public opinion into account. Indeed, the loyalty of the Chinese people to the party and state cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, in the past years, social unrest including riots, strikes, demonstrations, and protests has rose in China. This has its reasons as in the backwater of the impressive economic development we seen there is a growing discontent with the economic distribution in the Chinese society. Increasingly the Chinese government has realized that the balance between economic growth and social stability needs to be maintained, if not for any other reason for governmental stability.
Research focal points for the project are economic and social development in the future of China from a national perspective and it examines how China could achieve a balanced domestic development between economy and society.
Primary Researcher
Sangsoo Lee
