PREDICTIONS on China dominated the last day of a conference on Asia's future attended by about 30 international scholars in Hong Kong yesterday.
Delegates to the two-day conference, jointly organised by the Asia Research Centre of the Murdoch University and the University of Hong Kong, discussed subjects such as press freedom, economic expansion in Asia, and China in the post-Deng Xiaoping era.
Professor David Goodman of the University of Technology in Sydney said that it was difficult to accurately predict China's future.
'China always stands on its own,' said Professor Goodman, director of the university's Institute for International Studies.
He said China had a 'messy continental system' and its size made it qualitatively different from developments in other East Asian political economies.
China was highly regionalised, with parts of the country experiencing different paces of development both politically and economically.
He said a few years ago many economic analysts had predicted that China would not be able to afford a 10 per cent economic growth rate, but evidence showed the contrary.
