There is no question that China is growing more powerful with the rapid development of its national strength subtly influencing the world in both visible and invisible ways. How should China interact with the world throughout its steady rise, and how should the world live with a growing China? During the Fifth World Forum on China Studies held in Shanghai in late March, Chinese and overseas scholars shared their views on China's relations with the international system in the coming decade. Excerpts follow:

Zhang Weiwei

(professor at Shanghai-based Fudan University and a senior fellow with the Center for Asian Studies in Geneva):

As it rises over the next decade, China should develop in a big way its political narrative. China's idea of "good governance vs. bad governance" can better explain this complicated world than the Western idea of "democracy vs. autocracy." China's concept of meritocracy helps overcome the various defects associated having the blind faith in elections. China's philosophy of the mixed economy challenges the convention of the Washington consensus. China's political narrative is expected to interact and compete with the existing Western political narrative, and it is only through this kind of interaction and competition that can China develop itself more smoothly, and help make the world's future be more just, peaceful and convergent.

Vairo Lionel

(CEO of Luxembourg-based CEC Consulting and a former French diplomat):

The world has entered an age of de-Westernization caused by a major crisis of powerlessness. Western powers have overused their power in all respects: unjustified wars and invasions, inability to overcome a major economic and financial crisis because real power was concentrated in the hands of financial invisible actors, called "the markets," and demands addressed to rising powers to pay for climate and environmental damages caused by two centuries of rapid industrialization in the West.

A few rising powers have also started to question the dominant Western liberal ideology, even those have historically strong links with the United States and Europe like India or Brazil. Still, they have started to set up new international arenas, like BRICS or the East Asia Summit, with or without the participation of Western powers, in order to join their resources so as to gradually change the rules that were defined by the West after World War II.

Within this new framework of international relations, China is most probably the major actor in front of the West. Its economic and financial power makes it impossible for Western countries to ignore China's feelings or policies. But it also raises a main question: Does China progressively move to Westernization as it is often presented in Western media and analysis, or does China prepare the world for de-Westernization by inventing a new model of political rule, economic development and society? For the future of the world, the answer to this question will have a decisive influence.

China's soft power is presently very weak, mostly based on its economic strength. Soft power is all about dreaming. In most countries around the world, and more specifically in developing countries, young people dream about America, as it used to be for young Europeans a few decades ago. Their understanding of America is the result of American movies' influence on their imagination. For the time being, almost no young people dream about China, even when they are seriously interested in Chinese culture or China's path to development. It has no impact on their imaginations; but rather influences their vision of development possibilities, without the dream. China's challenge is found in this dimension, which has not been taken into consideration until now.