Table Of ContentInternational Political Economy Series
Series Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Visiting Professor, University of Massachusetts
Boston, USA and Emeritus Professor, University of London, UK
The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises impacts its
organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked its development in both
analysis and structure over the last three decades. It has always had a concentra-
tion on the global South. Now the South increasingly challenges the North as the
centre of development, also reflected in a growing number of submissions and
publications on indebted Eurozone economies in Southern Europe.
An indispensable resource for scholars and researchers, the series examines
a variety of capitalisms and connections by focusing on emerging economies,
companies and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communi-
ties as the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially the
BRICS, rise.
Bringing together some of the very best titles in the International Political
Economy series’ history, the IPE Classics showcase these titles and their continued
relevance, all now available in paperback, updated with new material by the
authors and a foreword by series editor Timothy M. Shaw.
Titles include:
Shaun Breslin
CHINA AND THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw
AFRICA’S CHALLENGE TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THEORY
Randall Germain
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS CRITICS
Perspectives from Political Economy
Stephen Gill
GLOBALIZATION, DEMOCRATIZATION AND MULTILATERALISM
John Harriss, Kristian Stokke and Olle Törnquist
POLITICISING DEMOCRACY
The New Local Politics of Democratisation
David Hulme and Michael Edwards
NGOs, STATES AND DONORS
Too Close for Comfort?
Sharon Stichter and Jane L. Parpart
WOMEN, EMPLOYMENT AND THE FAMILY IN THE INTERNATIONAL DIVISION
OF LABOUR
Peter Utting and José Carlos Marques
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND REGULATORY GOVERNANCE
Towards Inclusive Development?
International Political Economy Series
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Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71110–1 paperback
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China and the Global
Political Economy
Shaun Breslin
Professor, Department of Politics and International Studies,
University of Warwick, UK
© Shaun Breslin 2007, 2013
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First published 2007
This edition published in paperback 2013 by
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Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword by Timothy M. Shaw vi
Acknowledgements xx
List of Abbreviations xxi
Note on the Transliteration of Chinese Names xxiii
Introduction: China – Yes, But ... 1
1 Studying China in an Era of Globalisation 14
2 T he Transition from Socialism:
An Embedded Socialist Compromise? 40
3 R e-engagement with the Global Economy 82
4 B eyond Bilateralism: What the Statistics Don’t Tell Us 106
5 I nterpreting Chinese ‘Power’ in the Global Political Economy 131
6 T he Domestic Context: Stretching the Social Fabric? 157
Conclusions 190
Afterword 202
Notes 211
Bibliography 220
Index 249
v
Foreword: Learning from the IPE
Series Classics Over Three Decades
Timothy M. Shaw
UNDP 2013 Human Development Report – ‘The Rise of the
South: Human Progress in a Diverse World’ – ... will examine the
profound shift in global dynamics that is being driven by the
fast-rising powers in the developing world – and the implications
of this phenomenon for human development ... Looking ahead
at the critical long-term challenges facing the international com-
munity, from inequality to sustainability to global governance ...
(www.hdr.org/en/mediacentre/
humandevelopmentreportpresskits/
2013report/)
I am delighted, honoured and humbled to craft this Foreword for the
initial set of Classics to be reissued in paperback from the IPE Series,
accompanied by new Prefaces. Both I and my students/colleagues/net-
works have been greatly informed over a trio of decades as both analytic
and existential ‘worlds’ have changed in myriad ways as indicated in the
opening citation from the 2013 UNDP HDR on the rise of the South.
Symbolic of this exponential transformation is this very Series, which
has always concentrated on the ‘global South’. Thirty years ago, col-
leagues and editors alike were quite sceptical about the viability of such
a limited focus; and indeed initially we only managed to publish a half-
dozen titles per annum. By contrast, since the start of the second decade
of the 21st century, the IPE Series has been proud to produce over 20
titles a year. As Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2011: 22) has asserted, the estab-
lished N–S axis is indeed being superseded by an E–S one:
... the rise of emerging societies is a major turn in globaliza-
tion ... North-South relations have been dominant for 200 years and
now an East-South turn is taking shape. The 2008 economic crisis is
part of a global rebalancing process.
This overview juxtaposes a set of parallel/overlapping perspectives to
consider whether the several ‘worlds’ – from North Atlantic/Pacific and
vi
Foreword vii
onto Eurozone PIIGS versus ‘second world’ (Khanna 2009) of Brazil,
Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) / Columbia, Indonesia,
Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa (CIVETS) / Mexico, Indonesia,
South Korea, Turkey (MIST) / Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey,
Argentina (VISTA) – have grown together or apart as global crises and
reordering have proceeded (see myriad heterogeneous analyses such as
Cooper and Antkiewicz 2008, Cooper and Flemes 2013, Cooper and
Subacchi 2010, Economist 2012, Gray and Murphy 2013, Lee et al. 2012,
Pieterse 2011, USNIC 2012, WEF 2012 and World Bank 2012 as well as
O’Neill 2011). In turn, ‘contemporary’ ‘global’ issues – wide varieties of
ecology, gender, governance, health, norms, technology etc (see part (v)
below) – have confronted established analytic assumptions/traditions
and actors/policies leading to myriad ‘transnational’ coalitions and het-
erogeneous initiatives/processes/regulation schemes as overviewed in
Bernstein and Cashore (2008), Dingwerth (2008), Hale and Held (2011)
et al. (see part (vii) below). Such extra or semi-state hybrid governance
increasingly challenges and supersedes exclusively interstate interna-
tional organization/law. Clark and Hoque (2012) have assembled a stel-
lar, heterogeneous team to consider any such ‘post-American world’
(Zakaria 2011): what salient, sustainable features of ‘the rest’ (Shaw
2012b)?
My overall impression or assumption is that IPE with such a focus on
the global South increasingly overshadows – trumps?! – IDS, IR (but cf
Bremmer 2012 and Bremmer and Rediker 2012 on resilience/revival of
Political Science (PS) as analysis of Emerging Markets (EMs) (www.eura-
siagroup.net)), area/business/gender/security studies, and established
orthodox social science ‘disciplines’ such as economics, political sci-
ence, sociology etc. In turn, IPE may yet increasingly face challenges
from analysis broadly construed as ‘global studies’, especially in the US
whose universities never really did ‘development’. So I seek to identify
areas where such a version of IPE generates similarities to or differences
from such approaches, along with ‘silences’ in each plus divergent rank-
ing of factors among them.
Every title in this set of Classic editions includes a contemporary
update on both existential and theoretical developments: from ‘Asian’ to
‘global’ crises, from newly industrializing countries (NICs) to BRICs and
onto PIIGS and BRICS/CIVETS/MIST/VISTA, Price Waterhouse Cooper’s
(PWC) E7 (PWC 2013). These sets of Emerging Markets embody slightly
different sets of assumptions/directions/implications; PWC expanded
the ‘Next-11’ of Goldman Sachs (i.e. 15 without RSA) to 17 significant
EMs by 2050 (Hawksworth and Cookson 2008). Symptomatically, the
viii Foreword
initial iconic acronym was proposed at the start of the new century
by a leading economist working for a global financial corporation –
Jim O’Neill (2011) of Goldman Sachs (www2.goldmansachs.com) –
who marked and reinforced his initial coup with celebration of its first
decade. As he notes, global restructuring has been accelerated by the
simultaneous decline not only of the US and UK but also the south-
ern members of the eurozone. Many now predict China to become the
largest economy by 2025 and India to catch-up with the US by 2050
(Hawksworth and Cookson 2008: 3). PWC (2013: 6 and 8) suggests
that:
The E7 countries could overtake the G7 as early as 2017 in PPP
terms ... the E7 countries could potentially be around 75% larger than
the G7 countries by the end of 2050 in PPP terms ...
By 2050, China, the US and India are likely to be the three largest
economies in the world ...
But Stuart Brown (2013: 168–170) notes that there are competing proph-
ecies about the cross-over date when China trumps the US, starting
with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) advancing it to 2016.
Meanwhile, global architecture is very fluid: the inter-governmental
Financial Stability Board (www.financialstabilityboard.org) is matched
by think tank networks like the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Risk
Response Network (RRN) (www.weforum.org/global-risks-2012) and
the Global Risk Institute (www.globalriskinstitute.com); all creations
in response to the global crisis towards the end of the first decade. As
the G8 morphed into G20 (Cooper and Antkiwicz 2008, Cooper and
Subbachi 2010) a variety of analysts attempted to map the emerg-
ing world, including Parag Khanna’s (2009) second world and Fareed
Zakaria’s rest: for example: the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative (GRI),
which included a small state caucus centred on Qatar, Singapore and
Switzerland (Cooper and Momani 2011) (for a readers’ guide to GRI
see www.umb.edu/cgs/research/global_redesign_initiative), to the
Constructive Powers Initiative advanced by Mexico (www.conse-
jomexicano.org/en/constructive-powers), which brought older and
newer middle powers together (Jordaan 2003) such as the old Anglo
Commonwealth with inter alia Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
And at the end of 2012, from both sides of the pond, the US National
Intelligence Council produced ‘Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds’
(GT 2030) (www.gt2030.com), which identified four ‘megatrends’
like ‘diffusion of power’ and ‘food, water, energy nexus’; a half-dozen
Foreword ix
‘game-changers’; and four ‘potential worlds’ from more to less conflict/
inequality, including the possibilities of either China-US collabora-
tion or of a ‘nonstate world’. And Chatham House in London reported
on ‘Resources Futures’ (Lee et al. 2012: 2) with a focus on ‘the new
political economy of resources’ and the possibility of natural resource
(NR) governance by ‘Resource 30’ (R30) of major producers/consum-
ers, importers/exporters (www.chathamhouse.org/resourcesfutures):
G20 including the BRICs, but not BRICS (i.e. no RSA), plus Chile,
Iran, Malaysia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland,
Thailand, UAE and Venezuela.
And in the case of the most marginal continent, Africa, its possi-
ble renaissance was anticipated at the turn of the decade by Boston
Consulting Group (BCG), Centre for Global Development (CGD),
McKinsey et al. (Shaw 2012a), with the Economist admitting in January
2011 that it might have to treat Africa as the ‘hopeful’ rather than ‘hope-
less’ continent. In December 2012, James Francis in the African MSN
Report cited Africa’s 15 biggest companies: from Sonatrach (Algeria) and
Sonangol (Angola) and Sasol (RSA) through MTN, Shoprite, Vodacom
and Massmart/Walmart to SAPPI (www.african.howzit.msn.com/
africa’s-15-biggest-companies/).
The demand or need for ‘development’ is shifting away from the
poorest countries, including ‘fragile states’ (Brock et al. 2012, www.for-
eignpolicy.com/failedstates), to poor communities in the second (and
first?!) worlds: the other side of the rise of the middle classes in the
global South (Sumner and Mallett 2012). Moreover, the supply of devel-
opment resources is also moving away from the old North towards the
BRICS (Chin and Quadir 2012) and other new official donors like South
Korea and Turkey plus private foundations like Gates, faith-based organ-
isations (FBOs), remittances from diasporas, Sovereign Wealth Funds
(SWFs) and novel sources of finance such as taxes on carbon, climate
change, emissions, financial transactions etc (Besada and Kindornay
2013).
(i) Varieties of development
‘Development’ was a notion related to post-war decolonisation and
bipolarity. It was popularised in the ‘Third World’ in the 1960s,
often in relation to ‘state socialism’, one-party even one-man rule,
but superseded by neo-liberalism and the Washington Consensus.
Yet the NICs then BRICs pointed to another way by contrast to those
in decline like fragile states (Brock et al. 2012); such ‘developmental-
ism’ (Kyung-Sup et al. 2012) has now even reached Africa (UNECA
