Open-door policy leaves successors with serious dilemmas.

(From South China Morning Post)

Byline: David Zweig is Professor of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His most recent book is Internationalising China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages, published by Cornell University David Zweig

THE LEADERSHIP THAT emerges in the months following the 16th Communist Party Congress will inherit many policies from the second and third generation of leaders who led China through the 1980s and 1990s. One of the most successful policies has been nearly a quarter of a century of open-door policy. Since the Third Plenum of the 11th party congress in December 1978 called on China to open up to the outside world, it has been one of the world's most successful practitioners of export-led growth. A hospitable environment for foreign direct investment and increased access to its domestic market has attracted hundreds of thousands of …