The new Chinese dream: industrial transition in the post-pandemic era

As we go to press with this volume, let me unabashedly paraphrase Winston Churchill: “it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” of the Covid-19 pan- demic. China is the largest country to have successfully managed its out- breaks and is maintaining strict border controls and immediate overwhelming response to prevent new infection clusters from getting out of hand. These measures plus the rollout of effective vaccines will, by the time this volume is published, bring us to the beginning of the end. At that point, a weary and wary world will look at China’s governance model of central control that builds on a selective narrative, which the chapters in this volume so ably explore, and decide how to respond to the China alter- native to sorely-tested post-war liberal democratic institutions of governance.