Chapter 7: China's Rise

Since 1978, China’s economy has maintained an average annual growth rate of nearly 10%, and the country has undergone radical socioeconomic changes, rapidly transforming China from a state of poverty and weakness to one of the most powerful countries in the world (Song et al., 2011; Xu, 2011). At the same time, China’s national infrastructure has grown astonishingly. High-speed railroads and expressways, which were nearly nonexistent in 1978, have grown to 30,000 km and 1,430,000 km, respectively (China Statistics Agency, 1979–2020). These changes have included remarkable new technologies and new educational achievements. China began its lunar exploration program in 2013, with the landing of the Chang’e 3 lander, and built the world’s fastest computer in 2015, with a computing speed of 2.6 × 10¹⁵ operations per second (Thibodeau, 2016). On August 16, 2016, China launched the world’s first quantum communication satellite (Gibney, 2016), and in 2019, Chinese universities (including specialized colleges) graduated 8.3 × 10⁶ people, which is almost 50 times the value in 1978. In addition, Chinese technology has advanced rapidly, leading to the launch of China’s first space station in 2021.