Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?

Author: Robert B. Zoellick
September 21, 2005

Remarks to National Committee on U.S.-China Relations,
New York
As Prepared for Delivery

Some twenty-seven years ago, Chinese leaders took a hard look at their country and didn’t like what they saw. China was just emerging from the Cultural Revolution. It was desperately poor, deliberately isolated from the world economy, and opposed to nearly every international institution. Under Deng Xiaoping, as Mr. Zheng explains, China’s leaders reversed course and decided "to embrace globalization rather than detach themselves from it."

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