Peter Achten

Made in China Peter Achten

"Made in China" sums up the Middle Kingdom's final rise to great power status. The last five years, 2016 to 2020, have been particularly important. The geopolitically striking shift is admittedly not the beginning of the much-invoked "Chinese Century". Rather, China is aiming for a multipolar world, albeit one with important contributions from China, in contrast to the hitherto American-dominated world. Europe and America have so far ignored this shift or have not yet really noticed it. After 500 years of Western domination - first with Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and Great Britain, then with the USA - the centre of the world has slowly shifted from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific region since the end of the Second World War. Since the beginning of the Chinese reform 40 years ago, it has been assumed time and again in the West that, according to the theory of convergence, China would, with economic development, come closer and closer to - Western - democracy. This has not happened. Rather, China developed with its own model based on its history and tradition.