Defraigne, Jean-Christophe --- "China Shakes the World: Challenges Arising from Shifts in the Global Balance of Power" [2012] ELECD 908; in Wouters, Jan; de Wilde, Tanguy; Defraigne, Pierre; Defraigne, Jean-Christophe (eds), "China, the European Union and Global Governance" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: China, the European Union and Global Governance

Editor(s): Wouters, Jan; de Wilde, Tanguy; Defraigne, Pierre; Defraigne, Jean-Christophe

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781781004265

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: China Shakes the World: Challenges Arising from Shifts in the Global Balance of Power

Author(s): Defraigne, Jean-Christophe

Number of pages: 37

Extract:

1. China shakes the world:
challenges arising from shifts in
the global balance of power
Jean-Christophe Defraigne

INTRODUCTION

This chapter adopts a long-term analysis to put the recent emergence of
China in the world economy into a broader perspective. This will show
that since its reopening in the 1980s, China is progressively reclaiming the
place it enjoyed in the world economy prior to the industrial revolution.
However the re-emerging Chinese economy is now expanding in a
globalised world economy characterised by a high degree of
interdependence rather than relatively independent, inward-looking
`world economies' as Braudel described the economic world system prior
to the sixteenth century. This contribution will outline how the recovery of
China's relative size in today's world economy is generating a profound
shift in the global balance of power. It will attempt to assess to what degree
the rise of China will erode the current US hegemony and will generate
increasing tension. Finally, this contribution will determine to what extent
this rebalancing of the world economy is comparable to the erosion of the
British hegemony in the world economy during the late nineteenth
century, which generated a multipolar capitalist global economy
characterised by major conflicts and crises until a clear hegemonic
position was established by the end of the First World War.


THE RISE OF CHINA IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

China, an Ancient Economic Power Prior to the Integration of the Global
Economy

Historians generally consider China as the most advanced civilisation ...