China: A Giant Power or Not? – Frank Dai

From Global Voices Online:

China used to be one of the mightiest empires and oldest civilizations in the world in human history, but its modern history, starting from the middle of 19th century, was full of disgrace, disorder and chaos as perceived by Chinese people, who has aspired to revive its historical glory in decades of efforts. Only with economical boom during recent years, which was built upon a huge yet cheap labor market, did China manage to become an influential force in international playing ground….

China is a vast land, with wealth accumulating for past few decades, which has provided enough diversity to our probe. 1.5 million families have possessed 70% of national wealth, i.e. there are about 30 million people who are fully satisfied with their living if we count 20 persons for each family. China would be a giant if we only focus on these people. But when taking the rest of national wealth and more than one billion people into consideration, we are much far away from aim of “utmost happiness for vast majority of people”. Faced with the huge population of the impoverished (the number varied from 30 to 100 million) and Gini Coefficient much higher than average, the most urgent task would be talking about the importance of individual citizen and rising of citizenship….[Full Text]

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