China's quest for economic growth : changing party politics and foreign policy?

• Main Author: Chai, Vivian Wei
• Other Authors: Nesadurai, Helen E. S.
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Economic development::China
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14398
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Since 1978 China decided to open its door to the world, it has drawn more and more attention from other countries in the world. Economic success has resulted in improvement of living standards of majority of Chinese people. However, China also faces many difficulties in economic aspects such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) reforms, particularly after accession into the WTO. Will the quest for economic growth lead to national policies' changes in China, and will it further lead to change in political policies. But there are some signals from the Communist Party of China (CPC) that we may look into and predict the future development. This is the first main section that will be discussed in this article. In addition, the other major section is analyses of changes in China's foreign policy. The analysis mainly focus on Sino-US relations which also involved China-Taiwan, North Korea and Iraq issue, as well as China-ASEAN relations. The main argument is that China's economic interests are the most important factor in decision making of its foreign policy in recent few years. The author concludes that it is the economic growth quest that drives both domestic politics and foreign policy in China.