In what way is China capitalist?

Socialism and Democracy, 2017

The nature of China’s development model, if there is any, continues to be the subject of debate, often divided by ideologies and theoretical lenses, both in China and the West. While the Communist Party of China (CPC) tries to fend off the capitalism label via the self-professed notion of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, mainstream media in the West and English literature on Chinese studies struggle to pin down the nature of the Chinese state, with most seeing China politically as a communist regime and economically as state-dominant capitalism. However, some Marxist thinkers, such as Amin, maintain that China is not capitalist. Citing its recent and remarkably fast economic rise, they argue that China is a viable alternative to global capitalism. In this article, we go back to the theoretical core of capitalism and socialism and use class analysis to respond to this view. We argue that post-reform China is unequivocally capitalist. A class analysis of post-reform China shows that the workers and peasants have been politically marginalized and economically re-proletarianized.

Socio-economic Review, 2020

No doubt China's rise to power and the question of how the Chinese leadership has been able to successfully combine a one-party communist political system with a thriving capitalist economic system-lifting 850 million people out of poverty and becoming the world's second largest economy in just a few decades-is one of today's key questions; posing a significant puzzle to academics and policy makers, in particular in the West. Many volumes, special issues and articles have been devoted to try and define and understand the particular kind of capitalism China hence represents (Arrighi, 2007; Naughton and Tsai, 2015; Nö lke et al., 2015; McNally, 2020; De Graaff et al., 2020a), and a multifold of different conceptualizations have been put to the fore, from Sino-capitalism (McNally, 2012) to statepermeated capitalism (Nö lke et al., 2015) and state-directed capitalism (De Graaff, 2020b). Yet, the question remains how to understand and explain 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics' (Huang, 2008), and the way in which it has developed and will likely further

Asian Perspective

This article explores the dynamics of capitalist development in the three political economies of Greater China. We have two purposes in mind. First, we hope to produce a fresh understanding of Mainland China's economic rise, interpreting it as associated with the process of late capitalist development. Second, we use a comparison with Taiwan and Hong Kong to examine whether China has converged with or diverged from four salient aspects of late capitalist development: the character of state ruler incentives, or the "will to develop"; the nature and structure of state-society relations; the role of business enterprises and business networks in supporting initial capitalist accumulation; and the transition of state-business interactions over time from mutual distrust to engagement and cooperation. In so doing, we hope to use comparative analysis to integrate the crucial case of China into broader inquiries on the nature and logic of capitalist development.

2020

The People’s Republic of China’s (henceforth named China) development over the past decades has been nothing short of extraordinary. While undergoing constant transformation and recording the world’s second highest GDP ($) in 2017[1], the socialist past appears a distant memory. Put bluntly, since the start of economic reform in 1978, China is booming with a “unique blend of planned economy and unbridled capitalism”.[2] Meisner even contends that the self-proclaimed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has evolved to become the guardian of Chinese capitalism.[3] At a glance this may appear as a paradox, due to the apparent zero sum game between communism and capitalism that has been continuously perpetuated by the rhetoric of the Cold War.[4] Conversely, this essay will argue that the emergence of specific ‘Chinese characteristics’ within the country’s manifestation of capitalism, can be understood as an outcome of uneven and combined development (U&CD). Through applying Trotsky’s framewor...

Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, 1997

A culturally shaped Chinese capitalism has received much attention over the last decade, accompanied by a renewed interest in Confucianism as the marker for Chinese culture. This essay argues against culturalist explanations of the successful economic development of Chinese (and more generally, East Asian) societies. The flourishing of capitalism in these societies, it argues instead, is best understood with reference to developments within capitalism globally. Rather than a source of capitalist development, a Chinese culture conceived homogeneously provides an ideological alibi to new developments within capitalism, as well as a means to check the disruptive effects of capitalist development in Chinese societies. An insistence on Chineseness conceived culturally disguises, and seeks to contain, the social and cultural dispersal of Chinese populations, the so-called Chinese diaspora.

2016

This paper is challenging mainstream views about the contemporary Chinese system as a developmental state and a variety of capitalism. Based on a comparative analytical model (Csanadi, 1997, 2006) I will demonstrate that in China the general features of a communist system prevail to date, and that the „Chinese specifics” is a structural variety of those general features. I will point out why the Chinese system is neither capitalist nor post-socialist. Instead, it is a complex party-state system in the process of transformation comparable, but not identifyable - to all other party-state systems in their period of operation and transformation. Mainstream concepts of Chinese developmental state, state capitalism, socialist market economy, emerging system, hybrid system variegated capitalism, polymorphous state, centralized developmental autocracy, entrepreneurial state, instrumental development state and clientelist state may be detected embedded in and accomodated to this complex and ...

Revista de Economia Política, 2014

In this paper, we review old and modern conceptions of "capitalism" and then we evaluate how "well" China fares on three touchstones of capitalism: competitive markets, generalization of wage-labour, and private ownership of the means of production. While we accept that China has come a long way under the first two criteria since the 1980s, we do not deem China yet to be a full-fledged capitalist economy for the State still wields great power through the allocation of massive state resources and control of large and highly profitable state enterprises, which dominate key sectors of the economy.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This paper analyzes China's political economy through the lens of the varieties of capitalism approach as formulated by . It presents the current state of knowledge about China in each of the five spheres of the political economy included in the varieties of capitalism model. It concludes that China in many respects resembles a liberal market economy (LME). In addition to providing an empirical basis for further discussion of the world's second-largest economy within the varieties of capitalism approach, the analysis raises questions for future research in three areas: the existence of multiple varieties of capitalism within the same national boundary; actual practice versus formal structure; and the nature and extent of social capital.

Journal of World-Systems Research, 2015

The economic ascent of China in the past two decades is the most dramatic change in the capitalist world-economy of this period. Analyses focus on changes in government control of the economy, the availability of low cost workers for export production, the historical characteristics of Chinese economy and society, and the role of the Chinese government as a developmental state. All highlight key parts of China s economic ascent, but none addresses what we argue will be the critical component of future sustained economic ascent, if it is to take place in China: the role of raw materials and transport industries as generative sectors. These generative sectors in the most successful historical cases articulate domestic economic development with the creation ofnew systems of international economic and political relations, ultimately restructuring the capitalist world-economy in support of a nation s ascent to core status and its ability to challenge the existing hegemon and other ascend...