Firm foundations

Learning advantage

The scholar highlighted the country's emphasis on education, among other fundamentals, behind China's success.

"Some factors for this success certainly lie in historical and cultural factors, such as the Confucian tradition, which gives education a very high priority, and the early technological-economic level: The country was already highly developed economically and culturally in the Song era (960-1279)," she says.

"In addition to these factors, there has been a huge effort by politics and society to build a modern country, especially since the reform and opening-up policy of 1978. A comprehensive yet flexible state development strategy, legitimized by broad popular support, has coordinated these efforts by all.

"The historical factors, like the political factors of success, are China-specific. In their complexity, they cannot simply be transferred to other countries with entirely different conditions. But it is also important for other countries to take a close look at the experiences China has made in the past decades to see whether and in what form something can also be learned from these experiences.

"Each country has its own particularities, resulting from its history and from the current political and social structures. However, some development strategies, such as raising the level of education, urbanization, infrastructure development, and above all, the need to combat poverty and raise people's standard of living and offer them a decent life, should be important goals, especially for developing countries," Leutner says.

"Here, China offers experience that can be taken up and modified and further developed for their own development."