East Asia Forum Quarterly, Volume 15, Number 1, 2023

Abstract

While many rejoice in something like ‘normality’ after the years of disruption by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world will not resume its former shape. Nowhere is this more evident than in China. So what will China be like now? The pandemic upturned normal life in China as it did around the world. As 2023 brings something like a return to normality in China, deeper currents are also coming to the surface. This issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly canvasses a range of shifts in Chinese society and daily life. It describes how women have been at the forefront of calls for social change, refusing to play their traditional subservient role; it explains how the rapid ageing of China’s population is not likely to affect China’s economic modernisation over the coming two decades at least; it examines the difficulties faced by rural migrants and in investing in the education of the rural young; and it details how individuals and community groups are responding to the poorly understood social credit system. After the disastrous economic performance of 2022, recalibration of China’s policies was essential, including through a retreat from zero-COVID and relaxation of restrictions on the free market under the banner of ‘Chinesestyle modernisation’. While the economy is expected by Chinese economists to grow by 5–6 per cent this year, flagging domestic consumption remains a concern. Policy responses to China’s macroeconomic challenges include deeper integration with the global market and boosting multilateral engagement, with a specific focus on the World Trade Organization, Belt and Road Initiative and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China is also doing more at home and abroad to confront the looming climate crisis. As the world watches China’s leader Xi Jinping with an increasingly sceptical eye, China is now trying to get back to business. China’s greatest post-pandemic challenge, however, will be the terms of its engagement with the outside world. The tensions between economic progress and individual freedoms, as reflected in Hong Kong, over the status of Taiwan and its role in US–China relations, and between the nature of its domestic political system and globalist foreign policy objectives, all define China, for one of our expert analysts at least, as an ‘anxious adolescent superpower’, claiming at once both developing nation status and global leadership. Asian Review explores India’s aspiration for a multipolar global order and the opportunity for plurilateral initiatives by Asia’s economic powers.