China’s Boom (I): The Geopolitical Economy of Reform and Opening, 1978–2000

Abstract

This chapter examines the substantive outcomes of China’s distinct modality of integration into the world economy. These were (1) to unleash the dynamics of catch-up development while forestalling the formation of a politically independent domestic capitalist class; and (2) to insulate the central state against the ‘internationalisation’ of its institutions. In China, political responsibility for GPN-led accumulation was devolved to local party cadres. This engendered the emergence of a multilevel governance structure, under which local government actors came to form a ‘bureaucratic capitalist’ class in pursuing strategic coupling with GPNs. Localised bureaucratic capitalism (in its many regional variants) did become a defining structural feature of China’s contemporary political economy (Au 2012), but this class fraction never became fully dominant at the national level, where a nationally oriented elite maintained political control and patronage relations with large state-owned enterprises—and arrangement which persists to date. In sum, China has experienced an internationalisation of capital without the internationalisation of the state. The absence of an independent capitalist class requires greater attention to internal divisions of the state, both geographical and institutional: since it is through these administrative divisions that fractions of Chinese capital are organised.