Limits to the Washington Consensus: Boundary struggles and China's transition economy

Abstract

This paper explores the interconnected normative and geopolitical-economic tensions between the Washington Consensus and the Chinese state through an analysis of reform discourses and practices at the World Bank. Frequently framed as opposing visions and templates of development, the World Bank and the Chinese state have engaged in a protracted relationship of mutually-informing exchanges of economic expertise, technical assistance, and policy formulation, evolving significantly since China's ‘opening up’ in 1978. I trace these shifting relations through an interpretive strategy inspired by Nancy Fraser's concept of boundary struggles, focusing on how the World Bank has challenged, affirmed, and affected China's institutionalized division between polity and economy. Through a new periodization of the World Bank/China nexus, this paper shows how transformations in geopolitical-economic relations condition the normative construction, representation, and reception of ‘economic models’. It also challenges antipodean conceptions of the ‘free-market’ Washington Consensus and ‘state-capitalist’ China through demonstrating the qualitative character of their state/market articulations.