Professor Rana Mitter writes in Politics In Spires on the rise of China

Professor Rana Mitter has written an article for the Departments Politics In Spires blog on the political, social, economic and technological advance of China, and where that places China in the world.

He begins by saying, When westerners think about China, the concept that springs more and more to mind is modernity. This seems surprising when one looks at the statistics after all, the developing middle class, an indicator of a more urban and modernizing society, is still a minority (perhaps 300 million of Chinas 1.3 billion population), albeit a fast-growing one, and China remains a very poor country in terms of per capita GDP, as well as substantially rural. Yet in other areas, its clear that China is placing itself at the forefront of our understanding of what it means to be a modern state. One iconic area in this regard is space technology: the Chinese Shenzhou programme of space exploration seems particularly daring at a time when both American and European projects are falling victim to budget cuts in their increasingly hard-pressed homelands. Here China is boldly going where others can no longer afford to.

The full article can be read here.