A lot to think about

For Carr at NSBO, the major question being asked is whether China is to have a hard or a soft landing.

"There seems to be this anti-China camp that always wants China to have a hard landing. The US has had a hard landing and so has Europe, so why shouldn't China? I actually don't think China will have a hard landing but I do think it is more difficult for the government to stimulate growth, particularly by conventional means (such as investment in infrastructure)," she says.

She says the other perennial issue is whether the China property bubble is going to burst and if there is going to be a crash.

"The sector remains so important to the China economy since it accounts for about one-eighth of GDP growth. What we have found is that private real estate investment is weak only up by about 3 percent year-on-year and that the market is being supported by the government's target of building 26 million affordable homes by 2015."

One key area of research about China is the environment, particularly after the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit of 2009 when an international agreement was not reached.

Isabel Hilton, editor of chinadialogue, an independent body based in London, Beijing and San Francisco, specifically provides research and promotes debate on the subject of China and the environment.

"There was a huge chasm at Copenhagen but it was complicated because the other elephant in the room was the United States which had signed but never ratified Kyoto (the 1997 United Nations' Protocol on climate change)," she says.

Speaking at a cafe near her offices in Charles Square, Islington, London, she says the main interest in the environmental targets- both for renewable energy and emissions- set out in the 12th Five-Year Plan.

"There was quite an important shift from the 11th Five-Year Plan and the 12th in that China decided it couldn't go on as it had been doing, which was hoping to get rich and then cleaning up afterwards," she Hilton.

"There has been a realization that cleaning up is infinitely expensive than not polluting in the first place. You also can't clean up things you have lost forever.

Hilton, also a leading journalist and well-known broadcaster, says she gets a lot of questions about the China renewable energy industry and whether through unfair competition it is destroying Western companies in the same field.

"They are worried about China destroying the clean energy industries such as solar and wind by subsidizing its own industries and creating market barriers for Western companies in China. You can see it in the wind sector, in particular, where European and American technology is actually more advanced."

One of the major issues in the West about China is its emergence as an economic superpower and the security implications for the West.

US President Barack Obama has made a number of moves in recent months to build alliances in the Pacific region and there has been a sense within China of being ganged up against.

Brown at Chatham House says China is now too big to follow a non-interventionist policy that owes its roots to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence of the mid-1950s.

"This is what we get asked a lot. I feel that this non-interference is way past its sell-by date and as a global power China has assets, interests and links ways past its own borders and can no longer say it just wants to develop its economy and look after its own backyard. There are going to be all sorts of people banging at its door and wanting it to take a position," he says.

Andreas Maurer, senior fellow, Brussels office of SWP, the German foreign policy and security think tank, says there is concern in Europe at present about a developing alliance between China and Russia.

He says some in Europe believe the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which also includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is developing a more political role.

"There is a perception within the EU that they are creating a new bloc, which they believe to be a threat. I don't think this is the case personally," he says.

NEEDS TRANSITION FROM CHINA BEING VERY IMPORTANT TO NOT SO IMPORTANT

Fallows, who is also author of China Airborne, about the development of the aviation industry in China, says there is not as big a discussion about China in the United States as many in China would assume.

"People in China see these clips on TV where there seems to be an insult every other day. I think Chinese diplomats on the scene are trying to tell people in Beijing to calm down since what they don't see back in China is the 5,000 insults about everyone else," he says.

Fallows was recently on the campaign trail with Mitt Romney and didn't hear China mentioned once.

"It is very much a third-order issue when it should really be a first-order one. It is very different to the 1992 election when the effect of Mexico on jobs was a major issue or in 1988 when Japan was the big issue," he says.

Michael Barr, lecturer in international politics at Newcastle University and author of Who's Afraid of Chinese Soft Power, says there is a lot of confusion in the West as to what China's new economic power means.

"If you look at some of the opinion polls done by Gallup last year about American views on China, they showed American people viewed a closer relationship with Chin a good thing. Many were under the false impression that the China economy was already larger than that of America. They had no idea also as to how poor China was in per capita terms."

Maurer at SWP says there is a growing demand for research on China's developing relationship with Africa.

"China has different way of cooperating with Africa in that it doesn't place any conditions when it invests China's yardsticks are local laws and practices, instead of European Union's requirements on human rights and sustainable development," he says.

One economic area in which there is a lot of research and discussion is that of yuan convertibility. China announced at the end of June that it was to set up a special business zone in Shenzhen as trial for this.

"We get asked about this a lot since there seems to be momentum," says Carr at NSBO. "You had situations last year where QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2) just resulted in inflated commodity prices. If the yuan was fully convertible it is not inconceivable that things like commodity prices could be priced in yuan rather than dollars since China is a major user of them."

Whether the type of research coming out of the various think tanks at present influences actual policy in either China or the West is also open to debate.

"I think this is more the case in the United States were the likes of the Brookings Institution and Carnegie Endowment are more embedded in the system. I think 26 people went from Brookings to the Obama administration so you get this amazing crossover of people. This doesn't tend to happen in Europe where the think tanks are more separate," says Brown at Chatham House.

A big question also is whether there is a diversion between the thinking in among research bodies about China and that from Western institutions

Fallows, for one, thinks there is now a convergence of thinking that didn't previously exist.

"I think some of the discussion I have been having in Washington recently has not been that different from that I had in Shanghai a couple of weeks before. I think this is a step forward of sorts. There is no longer this up or down, black or white view, at least among the people I have been talking to," he says.

Fu Jing contributed to this story.

andrewmoody@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/06/2012 page1)