China's economy: From past to future

Abstract

Why did China grow so fast in the past four decades? What were the main factors? Important ones were: attitude of government; opening to the world; role of culture; exploitation of technological gap; role of foreign trained students; and role of government in the creation of modern infrastructure. These factors are likely to play a much smaller role in the future while several negative factors -populism, trade wars, environmental obstacles, aging of the population, authoritarianism and others are likely to lead to significantly lower growth rates.