China’s Crisis of Success
China’s Crisis of Success provides new perspectives on China’s rise to
superpower status, showing that China has reached a threshold where
success has eliminated the conditions that enabled miraculous growth.
Continued success requires reinvention of its economy and politics. The
old economic strategy based on exports and infrastructure now piles up
debt without producing sustainable economic growth, and Chinese society
now resists the disruptive change that enabled earlier reforms. While
China’s leadership has produced a strategy for successful economic transition, it is struggling to manage the politics of implementing that strategy.
After analyzing the economics of growth, William H. Overholt explores
critical social issues of the transition, notably inequality, corruption, environmental degradation, and globalization. He argues that Xi Jinping is
pursuing the riskiest political strategy of any important national leader.
Alternative outcomes include continued impressive growth and political
stability, Japanese-style stagnation, and a major political–economic crisis.
william h. overholt is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University. He is the
author of a number of books including, most notably, Asia, America, and
the Transformation of Geopolitics (2008) and The Rise of China (1993).