Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
6-2012
Abstract
China’s growing economic, political, and cultural power is an important global issue; Chinese people are increasingly interested in thinking about their country’s future as a world power. This article introduces the special issue ‘China’s futures – and the world’s future’ by discussing how futurology works in China. It argues that Chinese futures studies exhibit two general trends: (1) a shift from locating the future outside China to see China itself as the future, and (2) a shift from officials centrally planning the future to many different people dreaming about many different futures. The battle for the future thus is not necessarily between China and the West, but also takes place within the People’s Republic of China amongst different groups of Chinese intellectuals. This Introduction examines themes that unite the special issue’s diverse set of articles, especially the interplay between technical and cultural innovation. Studying the future here is important not because the forecasts are ‘true’; more importantly, Chinese discussions of the future can tell us about how people in the PRC interact with their own past-present-future, and how they interact with people in other countries in the present.
Keywords
Chinese politics, citizenship, futures studies, futurology, innovation, strategy
Discipline
Asian Studies | Political Science
Areas of Excellence
Digital transformation
Publication
China Information
Volume
26
Issue
3
First Page
137
Last Page
148
Identifier
10.1177/0920203X12443045
Citation
CALLAHAN, William A..(2012). China’s futures and the world’s future: An introduction. China Information, 26(3), 137-148.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4342
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X12443045