China – A New Center of Power in the Global Economy

n its first part, this paper looks at China’s rapid economic transformation of the last more than three decades, at its accelerated, never-met-in-history growth, and at the factors underneath: masive investments, both foreign and local, technology and managerial know-how transfers, related productivity rises, huge exports and, hopefully, increasingly larger future domestic comsumption. In its second part, the article highlights China’s complex impact on world demand, supply and prices, resulting from its extensive development and from its new positioning in the world economy. Finally, the paper also looks at the negative externalities of China’s unsustainable development, in terms of land, water and air pollution, speedier depletion of the natural resources of the planet and climate change, stressing upon the ideea that while the whole mankind is affected, the first to suffer are the Chinese themselves.