?;?;The dazzling speed of China’s recent economic growth has occasioned the rise, in some Korean circles, of the ';';G2 theory.” This theory elevates China to the status of a superpower equal in standing only to the U.S. Regarding this ascent, opinions proliferate: positive and negative prognoses about China’s future, debates on the sustainability of China’s economic growth, and divergent views on both the causes and the cures of China’s economic crisis. If John and Doris Naisbitt in China';s Megatrends articulate an optimistic view of China's future, Fault Lines on the Face of China by David Marriott and Karl Lacroix represents the school of pessimism. Opinions also diverge on the subject of sustainability for China’s economic growth over the long haul. While Mark Leonard in What does China Think? argues that China, by relying on a unique developmental model distinct from the West’s, will succeed in continuing its growth, Minqi Lee';s The Rise of China and the Demise of the World Capitalist Economy forecasts that China';s phe-nomenal development will soon founder upon the crises affecting the entire globe such as capitalist accumulation, depletion of fossil fuels, and global warming. Finally, regarding the economic crisis confronting China, Zhiwu Chen claims that development would be enhanced by a more rigorous application of American-style free market economy and democracy, while Larry H. P. Lang argues that the critical task is to seek an exit from the system of neo-imperial plunder built on the mechanisms of the exchange rate, trade, and control of raw material prices, a system which is led by the Wall Street and backed by the U.S. government. Despite such divergences, a common thread that runs through these texts is the emphasis on the contradictory ambivalence in which China finds itself today, brought out by analyses of multiple case studies and examples. The concept of contradictory ambivalence points to an inner tension generated by the simultaneous existence and adequate management of a plethora of internal problems afflicting China, and identifies this tension as precisely the force that moves China today. An attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the internal complexity of “the Chinese situation” must thus avoid an excessive interest in such questions as “the future of world supremacy” and go beyond Western universalist frames that foreground “democracy” and ';human rights.”