Overseas

08 Friend-shoring: The New Thought of America’s Industrial DiplomacyLi Wei

”Friend-shoring” is becoming the ideological foundation that governs the economic diplomacy of the Biden administration.In recent years, the intensification of strategic competition among major powers has prompted the U.S. to give greater consideration to supply chain security. It is based on preventing the risks of a single source of supply to reduce industrial dependence on a single country, especially a rival country.Under the slogan of “build supply chain resilience,” the administration is promoting international industrial alliances at the bilateral, regional, and global levels to preserve U.S.industrial hegemony and contain the economic rise of China.

12 Cover story：The Middle Class in an Age of Global Crisis

14 China’s Great Transformation to the Middle Class Society-A Comparative Analysis of Mainland China, Taiwan, China and Japan’ s Social Class StructuresLiu Xin

26 Parting Ways？-The Chinese and American Middle Classes in the Era of Anti-globalizationLi Cheng

This paper compares the differences between the middle classes in China and the United States. The sharp shrinking of the American middle class in the process of globalization is a key factor leading to the current political and social turmoil in the United States. In contrast, China’s new middle class has been the beneficiary of globalization, expanding rapidly in size over the past two decades. Although the situation of the middle classes in two countries is very different, the growth of the middle class is an important stabilizer for social development for both countries, and it is also where the interests of the two sides seek peaceful development under the trend of antiglobalization.

35 The Middle Class in the Epidemic: Civic Culture and Primarylevel Governance in ShanghaiXiong Yihan Wang Zhiheng

A combination of a strong state, a strong market, and a weak civil society constitute the fundamental structure of primarylevel governance in Shanghai. The civil society in Shanghai has given rise to a civic culture that bases itself upon the commercial ethos steered by a rising middle-class population.The core characteristics emerging from the situation include the rights-awareness and rules-awareness operating on an individualistic basis; the preference for marketization as means of allocation of resources; the reverence for professionalism,etc. This article extrapolates the mutual shaping of each other between civic culture and primary-level governance, based on recent observations on middle-class reaction to massive pandemic control measures in Shanghai, spring 2022.

44 The New Middle Class and Chinese SocialismLongway Foundation

Focus

52 Will Hegemony Still Shift? - Reread Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth CenturyQu Wanwen

Academic Review

68 How Do I Think about Smallholder Farmers in ChinaHuang Zongzhi

78 From “ the Masses” to “the People” - Maruyama Masao on the Three People’s PrinciplesSun Ge

Re-recognize the West

90 A Small Leak Sunk a Great Ship: The Primary Product’s Wartime Dilemma of a New Industrial PowerYan Peng

Germany was an emerging industrial power before World War I, and its primary products such as food and raw materials depended on imports. During the war, Britain used its sea power to blockade Germany, obstructed the supply of primary products, hit the morale of the German people, forced Germany to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare, and accelerated Germany’s defeat. Germany’s wartime strait shows that the production and effective supply of primary products are still of strategic military significance to industrial powers.The strait was artificially magnified by the country’s failure to be psychologically prepared before and during the war.

101 The “Double-Faced State”: State-Plan Entanglements in U.S.HistoryChen Xi

Policy

112 Future Starting Point Income: A New Redistribution Scheme in the Era of Common ProsperityDi Dongsheng et al

The future starting point income (FSI) is a government program in which every Chinese citizen aged 0～35 receives a set amount of money in digital yuan monthly, and every citizen over age 35 can apply for a certain amount of one-time funding for education or skill training. The amount of FSI received by adults is adjusted according to inflation, average wage, the balance of payments,and birth rate. FSI has multiple advantages: pursuing equality of opportunity, fiscal sustainability, low governance cost, and so forth. FSI is of great significance for achieving common prosperity, promoting high-quality development, maintaining social fairness and justice, expanding domestic demand, and boosting fertility.

Overseas Ethnography

124 Lawyer Career in the Era of “Great Recession”Dai Xin

Later-developing Countries’ Road

134 The Belt and Road Initiatives: The Intersection of Multiple SubjectivityYan Hairong et al

146 Is African Integration an Opportunity for China?Zheng Yu

The Ukraine Crisis has revived the concept of great power competition and increased global uncertainty. How will Africa-China relations evolve in the shadow of great power competition? This article will review the economic strategies of the US, EU, and China toward Africa in the 21st century and analyze the implications of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) on Africa-China relations. It argues that while the AfCFTA is central to achieving Africa’s regional integration, it also provides an opportunity for China to reframe its global strategy and mitigate geopolitical risks.