Globalization and the Developing World: The Difference that China Makes

Abstract

The re-emergence of China as an economic and political ‘driver’ of the global political economy is becoming one of the defining moments of world history. While there is a growing literature (which includes the current volume) that seeks to analyse the consequences of China’s rise for development elsewhere, the majority of it examines the impact of China’s trade, investment, geopolitical interests and so forth on particular countries or world-regions. While some of it is concerned with international governance, energy security, environmental sustainability and so on, and thus with ‘rising China’s’ global impacts, even this work tends to treat China’s interface with the rest of the world in a conceptually unmediated fashion. What seems to be largely missing is a literature that reflects on the possible consequences of China’s growing economic and political power for the nature of globalization.¹ Yet, in its own right, this is a potentially significant issue. This is so because China’s increasing global engagement across the economic and political spectra is changing the rules of the game. As a consequence, when China engages with any particular country or world-region (sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America etc.), its companies, work forces, migrants, diplomatic personnel and (perhaps ultimately) its military carry with them characteristics that are not only specifically Chinese (in terms of culture, values, priorities etc.), but attributes that arise from the shifting power relations, organizational forms and their associated expectations at the global level.