China’s development strategy中国的发展战略.pdf

1 China’s development strategy Lan Xue and Peter Sheehan In the latter part of the 1990s the discussion of the knowledge economy became very intense in China, as a perception arose that China’s continuing development would take place in a quite new world. This discussion was vigorous and influen- tial at the highest level, but became increasingly diffuse, as different participants used concepts in very different ways and came to quite different conclusions. The relevance of the concept of the knowledge economy to the quite specific circum- stances of China also began to be questioned. The essays in this volume express this diversity of viewpoints and approaches, as well as the need to explore the relevance of the knowledge economy to China’s situation. By bringing together the work of a range of distinguished Chinese scholars, leading authorities from the OECD and the World Bank, and authors from Australia and several other countries, we aim to illuminate many different aspects of this important topic. This introductory chapter does not seek to summarise or review the individual papers assembled here – the introductions to each part of the book provide sum- mary information for the interested reader. Rather we set out to address briefly some of the key questions that have arisen within the Chinese debate, and in particular to explore the relevance of the knowledge economy to China’s develop- ment strategy. Our central argument is that the knowledge economy, as we interpret it, is of decisive importance for China. This is because the knowledge economy will provide a fundamentally different global context for China’s development, one very different from the context of recent decades and far removed from that in whic