From Foreign Policy:
Is the “China Fantasy” starting to get deflated by reality? Three years ago, Jim Mann’s provocative book of that title 
identified the “China Fantasy” as the dogmatic belief of many Western political and commercial elites that China’s economic liberalization and growth would lead inevitably to democracy at home and responsible conduct abroad. The operative word was “inevitably” — the assumption being that China’s remarkable economic success would automatically produce a middle class that demanded greater political rights, and that China’s growing integration with the global economy would produce benign and responsible international behavior. Based on this assumption, the corollary policy prescription for the West was to pursue a policy of engagement and encouragement towards China’s rise.
This paradigm seems to be shifting. I recently participated in a conference in Europe on China, attended by a cross-section of policy, academic, and commercial leaders from Europe, the United States, and China, and came away struck by palpable attitude changes in at least three dimensions. Taken together, these are signposts that the previous conventional wisdom on China is coming under question
Read more about the China Fantasy in CDT’s interview with James Mann about the book.
