I mean there are plenty of books on the subject in English. For example, China’s Great Road is a great primer on how Chinese economy works and its historical context http://rdcy.ruc.edu.cn/yw/PUBLICATIONS/Books/f87f6b3cda0d45bfb22c2d3da5b3db3d.htm

And regarding the second point, I don’t really believe in any sort of historical determinism. I don’t think there’s a purpose for humanity or that we need to spread life throughout the cosmos. It is something I’d personally would find interesting, but I don’t think it’s predetermined in any way or even more likely than us going extinct. The growth trajectory we’re following right now isn’t really different that from a bacteria culture in a petri dish where it exponentially expands to use up all available resources and then dies off.

Also, I think it could be likely that humans are a transitional species bridging the gap between organic life and some other substrate that we create. It could be that future post biological life will bootstrap on silicon or some other engineered substrate. And that’s what’s going to colonize space because it will be able to engineer itself to adapt to the conditions of space and thrive there naturally. I don’t see anything fundamental about biology that is necessary for intelligence, I expect that algorithms in our brains are transferable to other substrates, and that eventually we will build machines that can think in the same way we do and have similar type of conscious experience to us. These kinds of beings would be far better suited to space travel, and could thrive naturally in that environment.