Strategy

The Glasshouse Forum has launched an international 12-18 months programme of enquiry and discussion. The focus will be on the return of the authoritarian capitalist states: China and Russia, and the potential impact of their rise on the Western world.

The emphasis will be on understanding the consequences for the global economy and world security. To cover the core dimensions, we envisage applying a multi-disciplinary approach calling on a mix of economists, economic historians and political scientists.

Participating researchers will over the project period take part in a series of round-table conferences, commission new research where appropriate, write articles and contribute to a final publication and public seminars.

The aim of the first round-table conference, held at Maison Louis Carré outside Paris on April 23-24, 2008, was to define the key questions and properly focus the project around four levels of analysis:

A. Historical experiences of the relation between capitalist economy and democracy: does capitalist development necessarily breed liberal democracy, or are we witnessing the return of capitalist authoritarianism/totalitarianism?

B. Internal dynamics China/Russia: Authoritarian states today, focusing on China and Russia. Comparisons and predictions about internal developments. Russia’s position as an economic-political model is not very strong. Does China represent a viable alternative, an alternative capitalism, in its own eyes and others?

C. China and Russia in regional and global politics: What role will Russia play in its relation with the rand states and for European developments? What does the relation between Germany and Russia look like? China’s role in Asia, Latin America and Africa. What impact will China’s rise have on global power dynamics, and on the international institutions? How will relationships with the US be affected? The significance of democratic India and Japan.

D. China, Russia and the West: When will their economic power have real political consequences? What are the consequences of their extensive ownership of sovereign wealth funds on the economic and political climate in the West? What impact will eventual takeovers by large authoritarian state owned companies have on business culture in Western societies? Will authoritarian great powers take any responsibility for long-term global challenges (such as climate change) or will they rather disclaim such liabilities and use the competitive advantages that might result from such short-termism?

A second round-table conference - "China-West Intellectual Summit" - was held in Paris on 23-24 February 2009. The Summit explored China’s search for a modernity of its own as an alternative to the logic of the Euro-American modernity and capitalism. It discussed whether China is, or has the potential of becoming, a model for such an alternative modernity and which consequences might follow. It also discussed the effects of the financial crisis on the debate about the China model. The summit brought together prominent intellectuals from the West and China for an open exchange on these topics.

Participants: Gideon Rachman, Chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, will moderate the summit. Other confirmed participants are: Timothy Garton Ash, Oxford University, Daniel A. Bell and Zhiyuan Cui of the Tsinghua University in Beijing, Azar Gat, Tel Aviv University, Simon Long, Asia editor for The Economist, Vivienne Shue, Oxford University, Shaoguang Wang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Feng Zhang, The Foreign Policy Centre in London, Wei-Wei Zhang, Centre for Asian Studies in Geneva and Fudan University in Shanghai, and Yongnian Zheng, National University of Singapore.

Glasshouse Forum has, in cooperation with the production company Edinim, produced a film - Is There a China Model? - from the conference. Read more, download and stream the film here.

We have also published a summary of the discussions. Download it here.

The main communication channels will be the Glasshouse Forum’s website, the newsletter LookingGlass, a series of short research reports, the final project publication and public seminars.