CHINA AS A WORLD POWER: SOURCES AND POTENTIALS

Mona Gabr Ali Mostafa

Post graduate studies, Cairo University, Egypt, monagabr03@gmail.com

 

 Abstract

China has gone quite a bit in the field of economic development since the eighties of the last century. From sixties to start of eighties, China’s growth rates never exceeded 5.3 percentages. Since start of eighties, until first decade of current century, china’s economic growth rate has reached a 10.4 percentage. On another side, while the Chinese government announced that the military budgets do not exceed 70 billion, Washington claims that Chinese defense spending had reached 150 billion dollars. In addition, on the social front, china is on its way for having the widest middle class in the world. The current research paper is trying to find out potentials and the limits for China to be the next world power. The research finds out that, despite the outstanding steps china have taken towards achieving development; it is still early to talk about China as a world leader, which is a fact Chinese leaders have always repeated when asked about China's foreign policy targets.