NEW DELHI — Six decades after it was founded, the People's Republic of China has made some remarkable achievements. A backward, impoverished state in 1949, it has risen dramatically to now command respect and awe — but such success has come at great cost to its own people.

In fact, China's future remains more uncertain than ever. It faces a worrisome paradox: Because of an opaque, repressive political system, the more it globalizes, the more vulnerable it becomes internally. At the core of its internal challenges is how to make a political soft landing.

Unlike its Asian peers, Japan and India, China first concentrated on acquiring military muscle. By the time Deng Xiaoping launched his economic- modernization program in 1978, China already had tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the 12,000-km DF-5, and developed thermonuclear weaponry. The military muscle gave Beijing the much-needed security to focus on civilian modernization, helping it to fuel its remarkable economic rise that, in turn, has armed it with ever greater resources to sharpen its claws.