While most of the Western world is in the grip of fear of losing its material wealth, the industrial revolution and globalization have spread Western models of growth like an epidemic: breakneck urbanization, heavy capital investments, mass production, centralized development planning and advanced technology are elements of economic policy which all developing nations apply; in recent years camouflaged as a global rat race amongst knowledge economies. It is above all India and China, the globe’s most populous nations, each of them inhabited by about three times more people than the EU and five times more than `the US, which brings new urgency to a need for economic transformation. But it is exactly these two continent-like and relatively young nation-states which are driven by the humiliation through the European scientific revolution to design their economic systems despite their avert dissatisfaction with Western hegemony in the same model. In particular, China has embarked on an unprecedented modernization trajectory. Urbanization rates have surpassed 50% in 2013 and all social structures including the labor markets are on a fast-forward reorganization which is only comparable to what started in Europe during the second industrial revolution at the beginning of the 20thcentury, i.e. when electricity swept over businesses like a thunderstorm leaving no brick on another.

Can Japanese counterculture and a renaissance of ancient Chinese values solve the crises of natural resources? Join us for a dialogue about the future of China and humankind with author Andy Couturier who has been invited to Shanghai to share his insights with us.