China at the crossroads

Since the late 1970s, China has enjoyed one of the most remarkable periods of economic growth ever seen. However, the country faces deep economic, ecological, political and social challenges. It is at the crossroads. In order to attempt to resolve the challenges, which path will China take? Will it turn towards ‘primitive capital accumulation’, ‘free market democracy’, ‘backwards to Maoism’ or ‘use the past to serve the present’? This paper argues that the only path towards sustainable development is to look to the country's long history as a guide to building a socially just, stable, cohesive and prosperous society. If, by the ‘Third Way’, we mean a creative symbiotic interrelationship between state and market, then we can say that China practised its own ‘Third Way’ for two thousand years. This was the foundation of its hugely impressive long-run economic and social development. By taking the ‘choice of no choice’ for its own system survival, China's can contribute to global survival and sustainable development, by offering a beacon as an alternative to the US-dominated drive towards global free market fundamentalism.