Deglobalization and China’s Visions for Reconfiguring Development Space

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen proliferating media references to ‘deglobalization’, frequently drawing historical analogies with periods of crisis and dislocation, such as the 1930s. At the same time, scholars have traced shifting geographies of development as a multi-centred unfolding of capitalist dynamics, entanglements and worldmaking projects, amidst failures and crises in/of development, sometimes discussed in terms of ‘abjection’. Negotiating these conjunctures and narratives, this paper re-considers and contextualises media debates about deglobalization, placing them in discussion with how Chinese narratives are re-visualising global development. In tracing the rise of ‘New Development Thinking’ (新发展理念) in China, we consider how global development as a project has increasingly come to occupy centre-stage in China’s sense of repositioning itself as a world power. Our conclusions reflect on the resultant consequences and challenges.