ABSTRACT
Since Deng Xiaoping launched China’s economic reform policy in 1978, enormous changes have occurred in this huge country. This has been especially the case since Deng’s famous inspection tour of Southern China (nan xun) in 1992, which led to a sustained soaring of the Chinese economy and a reformist social orientation. Most recently, the enormous transformations taking place in China have garnered quite intensive attention almost all over the world, above all among China’s Asian neighbors and the advanced industrial countries of the West. Increased attention has resulted in many predictions and discussions about China’s ascent to the status of a future world power. Implications have been outlined for the regional and global political economy, the prospects for American preponderance in the world’s power structure, and the future of peace and prosperity, especially relations among the actual and potential great powers of the future.1 These predictions have almost overshadowed previous predictions and discussions regarding the same topic.2
