In the current debt crisis China takes on a constructive role, but expects Europe to reciprocate. Proponents hope for investments of Chinese companies and financial institutes as well as the assumption of liabilities by the Chinese government. Critics, however, are sceptical towards Beijing’s own national interests, especially when it comes to China’s demand for an accepted market economy status which would lead to a variety of benefits for the People’s Republic. But even in China effects of the global financial crisis are perceivable. Enthusiasm about its tremendous economic growth has been damped. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, however, asserts a continuous stable economic development.

In this KAS/Beijing organized expert talk economists and doctoral students of the Central University of Finance and Economics and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing) tried to define China’s role in a potential strategy for dealing with the European financial crisis and furthermore considered the consequences for the Chinese economic power and its future economic development.

This expert talk opened a series of venues organized by KAS/Beijing in which experts from China and Germany analyzed manifold aspects of the global economic development with regard to Chinese economic and financial policies.