Chinese Political Economy Research Articles

Greater China, the challenges of global production networks and the dynamics of transformation

AbstractThe rise of ‘greater’ China (which includes mainland China, the ‘special administrative regions’ of Hong Kong and Macao and – particularly for our purposes – Taiwan), marks a transformative process in terms of the global political economy. China is now the world's second biggest economy, and continues to post double‐digit growth despite the global downturn. More significant than the numeric size of China's economy per se, is the extraordinary scale at which it is combining labour with capital to transform raw materials into commodities and, as part of that process, embedding the potential for innovation within China's political economy and society. In the introductory article to this special issue, we highlight the implications arising from the dynamism of Greater China for the evolving structures of global production networks (GPNs). The GPN framework provides a powerful analytical tool with which to map the shifting nature of corporate power and capital in the global economy and their consequences for local producers and regions. The externalization of the Chinese political economy and, with it, the emergence of Chinese lead firms, suggests that Western‐centric views on GPNs are likely to be challenged. We outline the ways in which the contributions to this special issue throw light on this, and the implications that arise for analysis of GPNs within China as well as for other developing countries. We conclude by considering the consequences this transformative process has for the developmental project and how it might be theorized.

Cotton Textile Manufacture and Marketing in Late Imperial China and the ‘Great Divergence’

Abstract By 1800 cotton cloth was China’s most important domestic trade commodity after grain. This paper reviews the history of cotton textile production in the Jiangnan region (or Lower Yangzi River area) where it thrived from 1300 to 1830, and discusses the factors contributing to its commercialization. It reveals the impact of the Ming and Qing governments in its institutionalization, and how the social organization of the industry was framed around the household economy and women’s labor. This essay also documents the problems that cotton production and marketing encountered by the end of the eighteenth century, and demonstrates how the recent debates about the ‘great divergence’ and the nature of the Chinese political economy resonate in the history of China’s cotton textile enter-prise. Finally, it shows how in the first decades of the nineteenth century, empire-wide demographic and environmental constraints brought economic stasis to Jiangnan’s cotton industry.

Urbanization of Capital or Capitalization on Urban Land? Land Development and Local Public Finance in Urbanizing China

This study examines the relationship between urban land development and municipal finance in a Chinese regional economy undergoing rapid urbanization. Drawing upon insights from the perspective of political economy, this study analyzes how municipalities in coastal Jiangsu Province have engaged in the land-dominated urbanization process, and the developmental landscape that has emerged from the new approach toward local public finance. Land development has not functioned simply as a passive outcome of urbanization, but has been actively pursued by local governments as a means of revenue generation to finance local economic growth. An inverse correlation is found between the growth of land conveyance income and the level of the regional economies in China's administrative hierarchy. We call for greater attention to be directed to the interrelationship between land development, local public finance, and urbanization in the ongoing transformation of the Chinese political economy.

Why Does Queer Theory Need China?

This essay resists a common scholarly tendency to treat “queer theory” and “Chinese political economy” as analytically separate issues by arguing that the emergence of new sexual positions and discourses has transnational and material origins. Long before the “linguistic” or “poststructuralist” turn, the historical transformation of the political signifier of “China” already provided an occasion for a critical theory of the subject for queer Chinese writers. Beginning with a close reading of Chen Ruoxi's Paper Marriage, one of the earliest full-length queer novels in Chinese, this essay argues against the Foucauldian hypothesis that homosexuality was a modern Western invention and therefore does not apply to the Chinese tongzhi. The question is not whether the incorporation of China into the purview of queer theory reinstates a colonizing epistemology. Rather, the question should be: what kind of critical inquiry is enabled when the category of the queer is expanded and revised by the particular?

The political economy of East Asia: regional and national dimensions

Introduction The Historical Origin of the Political Economy of East Asia, 1895-1945 The External Setting and Internal Dynamics in the Post-1945 Era The Japanese Political Economy since 1945 The South Korean Political Economy since 1945 The Taiwanese Political Economy since 1945 The Chinese Political Economy since 1949 The Political Economy of Regional Integration in East Asia Conclusion

Class Bases of Chinese “Marxisms” Today*

Class Bases of Chinese “Marxisms” TodayRobert WeilRobert WeilAuthor of Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of “Market Socialism” (Monthly Review Press, 1996), and many articles and papers on Chinese political economy and class relations. A lifelong civil rights, labor, environmental and international solidarity organizer, he has been Visiting Assistant Professor and Lecturer at the University of California Santa Cruz, San Jose State University, and other colleges. He is a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute.[email protected]Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:April 2009https://doi.org/10.1521/siso.2009.73.2.221PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations About Previous article Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 73Issue 2Apr 2009 Information© 2009 S & S Quarterly, Inc.PDF download

The International Implications of China's Fledgling Regulatory State: From Product Maker to Rule Maker

The principal analytical lens through which Western decision makers and commentators have viewed China’s rapid rise in the international economy is the country’s impact on global market prices. China is already the world’s fourth largest trading nation and has the world’s biggest labour force, and the prospect of a possible consumer base of over a million people makes it the most attractive emerging market. Because of this economic might, in both production and consumption, China has begun to shape prices for a large array of goods and services. While analysts disagree about the specifics, no-one fundamentally disputes that this ‘China Price’ effect exerts considerable influence over current international economic dynamics. This article’s main thesis is that the ongoing transformation of the Chinese state is empowering the country’s leaders to influence the non-market environment of business as well, and that this route of influence has the potential of being at least as important as changes in relative market prices. A series of domestic institutional reforms have provided Chinese policy makers with the tools to shape the rules and standards that underlie international markets and the terms of competition within them. We show that the particular importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) as a driver of China’s economic development amplifies the effects of ongoing domestic institutional capacity building. Having established itself as a global ‘product maker’, the next round of competition could see China establish itself as a potent ‘rule maker’ in the global economy. Indeed, evidence is mounting that Chinese policy makers are beginning to deploy their expanding regulatory capabilities to set clear market rules at home and leverage the Chinese market to export them internationally. While China’s already impressive domestic market plays a critical role in this strategy, market size alone is insufficient. We argue that China’s ability to influence international market rules depends on policy makers’ ability to employ new regulatory capabilities that are the result of a political transformation initiated more than two decades ago. Through a series of administrative reforms, China has constructed a fledgling regulatory state that gives policy makers new

Industrial Relations in China (review)

Reviewed by: Industrial Relations in China Kun-Chin Lin (bio) Bill Taylor, Chang Kai, and Li Qi. Industrial Relations in China. Chelten-ham (UK) and Northampton (MA): Edward Elgar, 2003. 264 pp. Hardcover $95.00, ISBN 1-84064-578-4. Readers will find this book extremely useful as a close reading of the policies of the central government of the People's Republic of China and the principal institutional legacies of socialism as pertaining to state-sector employment and workplace management. The authors—noted scholars in Hong Kong and mainland China—provide expert guidance in sorting through two decades of adjustments, both dramatic and subtle, in policies and institutions that many China observers may not have had the patience to follow or the open-mindedness to interpret without a presumed bias against China's conservative policy makers. The authors point out that despite broad continuities in the reform logic of the party-state, the actual formal organization, rules, and norms of industrial relations have begotten inconsistencies that work against the emergence of a basic model that approximates class relations and labor management in the West or Japan. This conclusion is perhaps lacking in drama for informed students of Chinese political economy; however, the chief contribution of this volume is the way that it unpacks the national image to expose contradictory forces and heterogeneities in outcome at the ground level. In the end, I find the authors' method of disaggregation restrictive and their analysis wanting in empirical support, but the general objective of their project is valuable nonetheless. I take issue with the authors' conception of a systematic approach in studying industrial relations, and with their analytical focus on the centralized state in ordering relations among its local political agents, managers, and workers. Throughout the volume they consistently criticize the existing area-studies literature for falling short of producing a general framework for understanding emerging institutions—one that would bridge macro- and micro-level analyses that have conventionally been kept relatively uninvolved. [End Page 249] By "systematic," the authors refer to a comprehensive coverage of three aspects of industrial relations—the main actors, their arena of interaction, and issue areas of direct relevance to labor management—and the central policies and institutional adaptations that have shaped these aspects during the reform era. Part 1 lays out the evolving institutionalized roles of the government, managers, workers, and trade unions—with very few surprising finds to offer a serious challenge to our presumption of top-down paternalistic relationships. Part 2 traces with clarity and attention to detail the processes of participation, labor conflict and settlement, and collective contracts. This framework falls short of being systematic on two counts. First, it implicitly accepts as the starting point the definitions, relationships, and typologies inherent in the former socialist system, which in turn was linguistically derived from Marxist hermeneutics. For example, the introductory chapter adopts a neo Marxist structuralist conception of the state as possessing relative autonomy from the economic classes and displaying its own imperatives as a social force. Discussions of the application of corporatism, neo-traditionalism, and convergence theories to the contemporary Chinese setting follow this conception and thus lack original and deeper critical insights. Later in the book (see in particular chapter 4 and the Conclusion), the authors attempt to deal with the operational tensions stemming from the rigid political definition of the working class and some administrative attempts to reclassify and redefine classes to better fit the reform agenda. However, they do so without probing deeply the actual realities of work and production relations that underlie sociologically and anthropologically informed studies of the reform era by Yang (1989), Ruan (1993), Zhou (1993), Lee (1999, 2000), Chan (2001), and Solinger (2002), and studies of the Maoist era by Perry (1994) and Perry and Li (1997). Second, the authors unduly privilege formal institutions and political relationships continuous with the decades of the command economy, including trade unions, "democratic" representative bodies, and central ministries. The chapters on trade unions, while admirably thorough in their detailed descriptions of their statutory roles and relationships, offer little clue as to whether the trade unions could ever carve out a significant post-socialist niche in labor relations. The authors...

The Business of Governing Business in China: Institutions and Norms of the Emerging Regulatory State

China began to establish markets a quarter century ago, but only in the last decade has its government made a concerted effort to design new institutions to govern them. Hence, a “regulatory state” is emerging. The prevailing literature focuses on a seeming convergence of Chinas institutions with the dominant global model of the “independent regulator,” including the establishment of new regulatory commissions. Yet research on China's strategic industries—those in the infrastructure and financial services sectors—suggests that assumptions of convergence obscure key elements of a regulatory design characterized by continued state ownership (as opposed to privatization), maximization of the value of these assets, and active government structuring of these industries. Moreover, regulators in the existing party-state bureaucracy have relatively weak authority. This research cautions us to rethink dominant models of Chinese political economy so that we retain a place for the central state in directing market reform at the “commanding heights” of the economy.

China Against the Tides: Restructuring through Revolution, Radicalism and Reform (second edition). By Marc Blecher. [London and New York: Continuum, 2003. xv +246 pp. £19.99. ISBN 0-8264-6422-X.

Marc Blecher's magisterial text on China's political economy was first published in 1996. The tale of China's unfolding political economy after the 1949 Revolution has often been told, but Blecher did full justice to the subject, telling his story with aplomb, verve and no little eloquence. By focusing on politics and economics, he sensibly restricted the scope of his book, and by combining three narrative chapters with more analytical chapters on the state, inequality, as well as economics and politics, Blecher's reach extended well beyond that of any mere descriptive account.This book, the second edition, retains the essential structure of its predecessor, but updates the story to 2002. In addition, a significant body of new material has been included. For example, the Society chapter includes an up-to-date and apposite discussion of gender inequality, whilst that on political economy discusses the implications of WTO entry. And, in recognition of the increased blurring of the distinction between rural and urban China, the separate chapters on the rural and urban economics of the first edition have been amalgamated. A little more up-dating would have improved the text still further; for example, the chapter on pre-1949 China takes into account little by way of recent scholarship. That, however, is only a minor quibble.In its essentials, this is a textbook, and that is reflected in the balanced and judicious tone that permeates its pages. Nevertheless, Blecher's stands as a text apart. For one thing, it does proper justice to the complexities of Chinese political economy and (in a truly excellent discussion) its administrative system. Doubtless, some will complain that it is too sophisticated for its audience, but it is hard to condemn an author for refusing to pander to the mediocre. Secondly, this book is richly informed by Blecher's own research on the local Chinese state and economy, particularly that on Shulu county (Xinji city) in Hebei, conducted with Vivienne Shue. It is, therefore, the work of a practitioner, not an onlooker. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it focuses on the fundamentals of development, class, inequality and growth, and in so doing avoids fashionable ephemera. In a sense, its flavour is rather traditional. For example, the term “social formation” is used without either apology or irony, and the 1949 Revolution retains its (rightful) place as the fundamental climacteric in 20th-century Chinese history. Not all will share Blecher's approach to these matters. However, it is hard to see how one can understand an explicitly Marxist state armed only with a knowledge of missionaries and modernization theory, or a messianic faith in the capability of the multinational to render harmonious a fractured social landscape. If we are to comprehend post-1949 China, we need to understand its political and economic structures, as well as the forces and ideals which animated its leaders. Marc Blecher's book is the place to start.

Explaining the Financial Performance of China's Industrial Enterprises: Beyond the Competition-Ownership Controversy

Scholarly explanations of the worsening financial performance of Chinese industry over the reform era, particularly the loss-making phenomenon, have coalesced around two rival stories: the “inefficient institutions causing poor financial performance” story and the “increased competition inducing profitability decline” story. This article critically reviews the arguments and empirical substantiation of the two stories, and gives an alternative explanation that takes demand conditions and industrial configurations into the analysis. On this basis, it is argued that the worsening financial performance is a macro as well as micro problem that points to the fundamental contradictions in contemporary Chinese political economy. Some policy implications from this analysis are raised in the concluding section.

The Political Economy of Chinese Rural Industry And Commerce in Historical Perspective

AbstractThe studies of Chinese reform era rural industry and commerce usually do not consider the political economy before 1949. This article suggests several ways in which an understanding of the political economy of Chinese handicraft industry and commerce in the eighteenth, late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as in the period since 1949 can strengthen understanding of current practices and future possibilities. It considers especially the role of social networks in reducing transaction costs and the particular ways in which officials encouraged rural industry in different historical periods in order to highlight features of recent Chinese practices that may make more sense when we recognize how they draw upon assumptions and sensibilities typical of earlier periods of Chinese political economy.

State, Capital, and Space in China in an Age of Volatile Globalization

The interrelationship between state, capital, and space is central both to the debate on globalization and to various interpretations of the changing nature of the Chinese political economy. This study of China's economic performance against the recent Asian financial turmoil suggests that the Chinese central state has played a crucial role in the growth and restructuring of the national economy. The immediate impact of the financial crisis on China has been limited although the long-term effects remain uncertain. China has so far narrowly escaped the crisis primarily because of a state-led capital injection in mid-1998 to stop economic downturn, an austerity program that led the overheated economy to ‘soft-land’ prior to the crisis, and stringent state control of capital flow into and out of the country. Contrary to the ‘end of the nation-state’ claim made by many globalization prophets, the Chinese socialist state has remained an active agent interacting with global market forces. The interplay between the socialist state and transnational capital has been a place-specific phenomenon despite the pervasive assertion of ‘the end of geography’. A dialectical approach is needed for analyzing the triangular nexus of interaction between the central state, local state, and global market forces in China in the current age of volatile globalization.

Farmers, women, and economic reform in China

A striking feature of Chinese political economy since the early 1980s has been a seemingly steady march of economic liberalization and development. This march has been accompanied, however, by rural protests and a decline in the position of women. This in turn has reopened debates about the meaning and processes of market formation where the visible hand of the state and other patriarchal agencies still plays a major role. Are there any early indicators of the implications of “market success” for social processes and welfare in the countryside and for gender equity in the restructuring of rural economic relationships? Several research studies and official United Nations reports confirm that during the past decade women have lost some entitlement; their labor input is no longer counted separately, and violence against women has increased.

Socialist development and rural inequality: The Chinese countryside in the 1970s

The authors investigate the nature and extent of economic inequalities in rural China during 1970–1976. Using a political economy approach, they analyse rural distribution within a matrix of political superstructure, productive forces and social relations of production. They conclude that the egalitarian nature of rural differentials in the early 1970s—relative to pre‐revolutionary China and many other Third World countries—stems from both the basic socialist elements of the Chinese political economy and from the leftist policies of the Party leadership during this period. The growth‐oriented policies of the post‐Mao leadership, on the other hand, will lead to a considerable increase in rural inequalities.

Relations of production, productive forces and the mass line in the formation of the rural people's communes in China∗

The structure, pace and uneven progress of the collectivisation of Chinese agriculture can be explained in terms of contradictions that persisited between relations of production and productive forces in the countryside and the ways in which these contradictions could be confronted through the application of the principle of the mass line. The formation and subsequent re‐organisation of the Rural People's Communes is interpreted as a necessary response to the fact that collectivisation was not predicated on prior modernisation of agriculture, but rather that Chinese political economy predicated the modernisation of agriculture on the success of the communes.

Chinese Political Economy in the Mao Period

Review of China's Economy and the Maoist Strategy by John G. Gurley. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Pax Corporata: The Peace and Conflict Potential of Multinational Corporations

Peace & ChangeVolume 2, Issue 1 p. 17-26 Pax Corporata: The Peace and Conflict Potential of Multinational Corporations DENNIS RAY, DENNIS RAY *Dennis Ray is a member of the Political Science faculty at California State University, Los Angeles. His fields of specialization are international and Chinese political economy. He is past chairperson of the International Political Economy Group of the International Studies Association and is currently editor of the Group's newsletter.Search for more papers by this author DENNIS RAY, DENNIS RAY *Dennis Ray is a member of the Political Science faculty at California State University, Los Angeles. His fields of specialization are international and Chinese political economy. He is past chairperson of the International Political Economy Group of the International Studies Association and is currently editor of the Group's newsletter.Search for more papers by this author First published: April 1974 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.1974.tb00192.x AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume2, Issue1April 1974Pages 17-26 RelatedInformation