China’s Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politics, and Foreign Policy by Daniel C. Lynch

China’s Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politics, and Foreign Policy by Daniel C. Lynch

chapter 1
The Pitfalls of Rationalist Predictioneering

speculation concerning the implications of China’s rise—
both for China itself and the world as a whole—should be understood 
in the context not only of post–World War II social science debates but 
also of the deeper historical transformations in European (and eventu-

ally global) thought that followed in the wake of the eighteenth-century 
Enlightenment. Perhaps the most profound of these transformations, in 
the estimation of intellectual historian Franklin Baumer, is that human 
society (or societies) came to be imagined as not merely “being”—in a 
state of constancy—but instead as “becoming”: potentially, though not 
inevitably, something better.
 Out of this change, by the mid-twentieth 
century, a multidisciplinary new social science emerged under the head-

ing of “futures studies,” devoted to the systematic analysis of national 
and global trajectories. Although it would be difficult to pronounce this 
discipline a success—given the practical impossibility of studying events 
that have yet to happen—contributors to futures studies debates have, in 
the process of directly confronting the vexing problems associated with 
trying to conceptualize national or global trajectories, developed ideas 
that social scientists, journalists, government officials, and others rumi-

nating about China’s future could benefit from considering. By reflect-

ing on the central problématiques debated in futures studies, we in the 
mainstream social sciences and larger community of people concerned 
about China’s trajectory could enrich our thinking about how best to 
conceive of China’s future.
As with the other social sciences, futures studies grew ultimately out of 
the mix of Enlightenment philosophy with the real-world—often painful—
practical experiences of people living in societies undergoing the wrench-

ing changes associated with industrialization and what was once called 
“modernization.” Psychologist and philosopher Thomas Lombardo, who 
founded a Center for Future Consciousness in Arizona, reminds us that 

“not only did the Age of Enlightenment bring with it a positive hope for 
the future of humanity, it also embraced the principles of science, includ-

ing scientific determinism, and hence . . . the great expositor of the En-

lightenment, Condorcet, offers a variety of extrapolative predictions on 
the future of humanity.”
 Yale University sociologist Wendell Bell concurs 
on the importance of this revolution in worldview but stresses the struc-

tural changes that came to industrializing societies as a result of economic 
growth and the rise of the modern state:
As the complexity of society increases, or decreases as it sometimes does, so 
does the potential for an increase in the scope of planning flow and ebb. Col-

lecting taxes, managing estates, irrigating the land, and waging wars require 
planning . . . Yet it was not until the twentieth century that economic and social 
planning grew into the comprehensive activities that reach into the everyday 
lives of nearly every individual. It was not until the creation of the modern state 
that everyday life became so fully under conscious regulation, encouragement, 
or direct control.
Once the modern state was firmly in place, bureaucrats, politicians, 
industrialists, intellectuals, and members of the general public could all 
begin to imagine national leaders using state power to direct their country 
or even the world as a whole to a perpetually brighter future, realizing 
both rational Enlightenment objectives as well as some of the more Ro-

mantic visions associated with futuristic utopian science fiction, which 
itself emerged in the nineteenth century.
 As a result, even in the depths 
of the Great Depression—and on the eve of a world war—Americans 
and others could celebrate a quasi-utopian future at the 1939 New York 
World’s Fair:
The theme of the fair was “The World of Tomorrow”; the opening ceremonies 
were held in a vast enclosure called “The Court of Peace” . . . Here, all about 
one, was the embodiment of the American dream, 1939 model. Bold modern 
architecture, sometimes severe, sometimes garish, but always devoid of the tra-

ditional classical or Gothic decoration, and glowing with color . . . Miracles of 
invention and of industrial efficiency to goggle at . . . In this fantastic paradise 
there were visible no social classes, no civil feuds, no international hates, no 

China’s Futures: PRC Elites Debate Economics, Politics, and Foreign Policy by Daniel C. Lynch