ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews several approaches used by experts in their attempts to manage the problem of uncertainty including highlighting possible disruptors of China's progress, using expert groups to promote a greater degree of consensus. It concentrates on the forecasting techniques used by prominent individual experts to address the issue of uncertainty. Uncertainty also marked British analyst Kerry Brown's views about China's prospects, although he sometimes tended toward pessimism. David Lampton cited a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) sociologist who thought China was at a crossroads where it could either evolve smoothly or 'spiral into stagnation and chaos'. Many experts to forecast China's future occurred within the context of a series of major reports sponsored by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC). In 1997 the NIC published Global Trends 2010, the first of five lengthy reports analysing future global developments.
