The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is under way. As oil insecurity deepens, the extraction risks of fossil fuels rise, and concerns about climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new world energy economy is emerging. The old economy, fueled by oil, natural gas, and coal is being replaced with one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The Great Transition details the accelerating pace of this global energy revolution. As many countries become less enamored with coal and nuclear power, they are embracing an array of clean, renewable energies. Whereas solar energy projects were once small-scale, largely designed for residential use, energy investors are now building utility-scale solar projects. Strides are being made: some of the huge wind farm complexes under construction in China will each produce as much electricity as several nuclear power plants, and an electrified transport system supplemented by the use of bicycles could reshape the way we think about mobility.

Major account of the fourteenth-century crisis which saw a series of famines, revolts and epidemics transform the medieval world.

This landmark study provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. The authors combine deep China expertise with broad disciplinary knowledge to explain China's remarkable combination of high-speed growth and deeply flawed institutions. Their work exposes the mechanisms underpinning the origin and expansion of China's great boom. Penetrating studies track the rise of Chinese capabilities in manufacturing and in research and development. The editors probe both achievements and weaknesses across many sectors, including China's fiscal, legal, and financial institutions. The book shows how an intricate minuet combining China's political system with sectorial development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt.

This book explores the great transition of China from a subsistence agrarian economy to a technologically driven economic powerhouse which reflects the achievements of the hardworking Chinese people. China continues to grow as the second largest economy of the world from 2010 onwards. It is going to be the largest economy in the world by putting US economy behind. The Chinese GDP has increased of 1,500 times from 1952. This book examines the transformation of China and its economic growth is neither miraculous nor a product of market economy. Further, this book states economic development in China as a product of political pursuit shaped by the Chinese people led by the Communist Party of China from 1921 onwards. China is not only the workshop of the world today but also works as the engine of global economic growth and recovery of crisis ridden global economy. This book also shows how phenomenal Chinese economic growth and development led to the significant fall of poverty in China. This book states that the prosperous transition in China continues to show features of combined and uneven development. This is evident as China has largest billionaires, but many people still live and practice subsistence economy. However, many Chinese do not have access to clean air, water, sanitation and dignified sources of livelihoods. This book shows the social, economic and political inequalities as hindrances to deepening of democratic and egalitarian development in China. This book states that the gender gap and widening gap between urban and rural China are twin serious challenges to progressive transformations in China. The Chinese state and government are trying to implement different policies and programmes to overcome these challenges.

China’s Challenges and International Order Transition introduces an integrated conceptual framework of “international order” categorized by three levels (power, rules, and norms) and three issue-areas (security, political, and economic). Each contributor engages one or more of these analytical dimensions to examine two questions: (1) Has China already challenged this dimension of international order? (2) How will China challenge this dimension of international order in the future? The contested views and perspectives in this volume suggest it is too simple to assume an inevitable conflict between China and the outside world. With different strategies to challenge or reform the many dimensions of international order, China’s role is not a one-way street. It is an interactive process in which the world may change China as much as China may change the world. The aim of the book is to broaden the debate beyond the “Thucydides Trap” perspective currently popular in the West. Rather than offering a single argument, this volume offers a platform for scholars, especially Chinese scholars vs. Western scholars, to exchange and debate their different views and perspectives on China and the potential transition of international order.

The story of China's spectacular economic growth is well known. Less well known is the country's equally dramatic, though not always equally successful, social policy transition. Between the mid- 1990s and mid-2000s---the focal period for this book---China's central government went a long way toward consolidating the social policy framework that had gradually emerged in piecemeal fashion during the initial phases of economic liberalization. Major policy decisions during the focal period included adopting a single national pension plan for urban areas, standardizing unemployment insurance, (re)establishing nationwide rural health care coverage, opening urban education systems to children of rural migrants, introducing trilingual education policies in ethnic minority regions, expanding college enrolment, addressing the challenge of HIV/AIDS more comprehensively, and equalizing social welfare spending across provinces, among others. Unresolved is the direction of policy in the face of longer-term industrial and demographic trends---and the possibility of a chronically weak global economy. Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition offers scholars, practitioners, students, and policymakers a foundation from which to explore those issues based on a composite snapshot of Chinese social policy at its point of greatest maturation prior to the 2007 global crisis.