1. SED) Presentation to the International Conference on Globalisation and Development in the Chinese Economic Region, National Taiwan University, Taipei, June 22nd-23rd, 2007

2. ( SE D) THE EMERGING GLOBAL-ASIAN ERA The Difference that China Makes Jeffrey Henderson By Leverhulme Research Professor of International Economic Sociology School of Environment and Development University of Manchester

3. Rising economic and political power and international expansion of China (together with India) heralds a new phase of globalisation: the Global-Asian Era (GAE)

4. The GAE is likely to be significantly different from the earlier phases of Anglo- American driven globalisation, constituted by:

5. 1.The Anglo-American Era I (AAE I) - ` circa 1815-1918 (associated with British economic-political hegemony) and 2.The Anglo-American Era II (AAE II) – circa 1919-present (associated with US economic-political hegemony)

6. While the transition from AAE I to AAE II was relatively uncontentious, the transition from AAE II to the GAE will be highly contentious, because:

7. 1.China is a dramatically different political economy and social formation from the countries that dominated AAE I & II 2. To the peoples of those countries (and the ‘Occident’ more generally), it represents the ‘Great Other’

8. 3.The context of China’s rise - the global political economy and its geo-politics - is in turmoil and more ‘fragile’ than at any time since WWII.

9. China’s difference and ‘otherness’ is more specifically associated with:

10. 1. The sources of its competitive dynamic, including: *Its ‘big country’ effect (low wages + increasing skill and innovative potential in abundance) *Fact it represents a radically different form of capitalism compared with previously dominant political economies

11. 2.Nature of its nationalism, including the impact of the legacies of its deeply negative experience as a colonised country

12. 3.Fact that it has been disengaged, historically, from‘Enlightenment’ values and democratic traditions and lacks a vibrant civil society that might otherwise act to moderate its authoritarianism

13. Consequently China’s global economic and political footprint likely to be markedly different from what has gone before