Certainly the emergence of China as an economic power was one of the most important developments within the world system at the beginning of the 21st century. The scale of Chinese economic advance was awesome. Its average growth rate for the period 1978 to 2008 was about 8 percent a year; its economic output was about nine times greater at the end of the period than at the beginning; its share of world trade had risen from less than 1 percent in 1979 to over 6 percent in 2007, until it was just behind Germany, the world's biggest single exporter; by 2005 it was "the leading producer in terms of output in more than 100 kinds of manufactured goods", including 50 percent of cameras,
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The New Age of Global Instability