China's rise and the shaping of a new Asian order

CHINA'S economic rise has rattled the world's nerves. It has also made the large Asian powers anxious about the changes in the world order Beijing seems to be orchestrating. That that is happening is unfortunate. The much-anticipated economic rise of Asia was supposed to give it a more prominent role in the evolving global order. It was not expected that with China becoming the word's largest economy, Asia will be torn apart. To understand where China has come from and where it may be going, we need to look not only at its economic performance, we need to understand also its developing political model.

The Chinese economy has grown rapidly since in the late 1970s when it opened to the outside world. The economy in 2015 is 32 times larger than its size in 1979, when, after the death of chairman Mao Zedong three years earlier, Beijing began to move away from "Communism with Chinese characteristics" to a system that allowed more space to private entrepreneurs and private enterprise.

"It is glorious to be rich," declared Deng Xiaoping who succeeded Chairman Mao as the great supreme leader of the Communist Party and the Chinese state. The new leader not only introduced a new style of economic governance, he also put in place a new system of political management. This had two important features: the unchallenged dominance of the party along with a systematic renewal of the party leadership every 10 years. With succession taking place in an orderly way, China has avoided what laid low the party-based authoritarian systems in Eastern Europe.