Introduction

Since the mid-1980s, the economic take-off of China and the impact of such a take-off on the global economy have been much discussed and anticipated as well as contested. Is China going to be Asia’s next economic giant? What would it mean to the world if it is (Perkins 1986)? In what sense is the economic reform in China creating a new superpower that is taking the centre stage of the world as No. 1 (Overholt 1993, Brahm 1996b)? How much is the new millennium the dragon millennium (Richter 2000)? What heralds the awakening of the next economic powerhouse, which ‘stands poised to alter the global economy’ (Brahm 2001)? Or, indeed, does China matter at all for the world economy and for the West (Segal 1999)? The most recent debates on how much China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is ‘a landmark event’ for the global trading system further highlight the contested but growing economic influence of China in the foreseeable future.