The “Chinese path”: uneven development, projectment, and socialism

Abstract Numerous indicators have demonstrated the robustness and resilience of the Chinese development process over the past decades. However, it is not uncommon to perceive, in current analyses, the Chinese process as just another case of successful catching-up, a latecomer of Asian matrix like Japan and South Korea. In fact, Chinese development is not trivial given its history and starting point: in 1949 China was the country with the lowest per capita income in the world and today it is competing with the United States for the technological frontier. In this article, we propose the categories "uneven development", "projectment", and "socialism" as fundamental supports in a background analysis of the real explanatory reasons for the Chinese success.