On the question of the transformation of Chinese society and strengthening of the PRC's foreign policy in the 21st century

The article examines some of the social changes in China in the period from 2000 to the present time (the level of urbanization, household income in villages and cities, the number of people dependent on the working-age population, natural population growth, and higher education), along with changes in the PRC foreign policy. Despite the interest of the international scientific discussion in the analysis of various social transformations in the PRC, Russian scientists are more focused on socio-economic phenomena, almost ignoring the possibilities of sociology to substantiate other processes taking place in China and differing in unprecedented dynamics. Foreign expertise in the field of Sinology, to a greater extent than Russian, uses the potential of sociological knowledge, but it should abandon the monodisciplinary approach in favor of an interdisciplinary methodology capable of providing a more comprehensive analysis of what is happening in the context of increasingly complex sociocultural dynamics. From the standpoint of political sociology, we made an attempted to analyze the impact of social transformations on the foreign policy of the PRC, which, obviously, in the period under study is characterized by a multi-vector strengthening and the emergence of new concepts of global scale. Such an increase in foreign policy activity is provoked not only by the economic and military growth of the PRC, but also by a changed society the selfidentification of which at the present stage corresponds to a powerful state, not just respected abroad but even capable to take responsibility for global international leadership.