China’s ‘state capitalism’ in comparative and historical perspectives

Abstract

The persistent and increasing domination of the state in China’s contemporary capitalist development leads many to apply the vague concept of state capitalism to China’s economic model. Comparing China with the earlier Asian developmental states, I discuss the distinctiveness of China’s state capitalism, underlined by the state’s paternalistic disposition toward capital and the weakness in private property protection. I argue that the subordination of capital to the political imperative of the Communist party-state, as well as the party-state elite’s explicit reference to the state’s paternalistic discipline of capital in the Qing dynasty, illustrates a connection between today’s statist economic model and Qing dynasty’s familial statism, under which the Manchu state conceptualized and governed the empire as an imagined hierarchal-communalist patrilineage. Comparing and connecting state-capital relations in China's past and present will help us better understand the nature of economic governance in China today.