China's rising importance in the capitalist worldeconomy raises questions of world-historic significance. How is China's internal social structure likely to evolve as China assumes different positions in the existing world system? Will China's current regime of accumulation survive the potential pressures arising out of the transformation? How will other peripheral and semi-peripheral states be affected? Can the reemerging Chinacentered civilization provide solutions to the problems left behind by U. S. hegemony? If not, how will the rise of China affect the (...) underlying dynamics of the existing world system? The existing world system may have entered into a structural crisis. Can the system survive the rise of China? In the age of transition, instead of expecting the same pattern of systemic dynamics with which we have become familiar, it may be more appropriate to expect bifurcation, chaos, transformations, and the "turns" and "tricks" of history. (shrink)