Abstract
Deng Xiaoping's death on February , 1997, left China without the " father " of the evolution it had been following since 1978. . Though he was a survivor of the Long March, he repelled a lot of Mao Zedong's inheritance and introduced his country to what is certainly the single most fundamental period of change in its recent history. Indeed, the People's Republic of China is both moving from a " socialist ", autarkic development model to a free-market one and acquiring the status of big power it had long been denied. No doubt, the irruption of 1.3 billion Chinese on the international stage will be one of the major concerns of the early XXIst century. And China can not be limited to the PRC : Taiwan, Hong Kong (to be returned to the mainland on July 3, this year) and even Singapore (75 % ethnic Chinese) are also part of the Chinese world.
How will China and its partners cope with the tremendous changes at work (and with die-hard permanencies from Imperial China) in Chinese economy, society and even mentalities which all have consequences for Chinese power ?
China's economic surge (although not stainless) is making a real power of it, but many uncertainties remain as for its integration in the "world community".
