China's Rise in the Age of Globalization: Myth or Reality?

400 Pages·2018·3.48 MB·English

by  Jianyong Yue (auth.)

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
CHINA’S RISE IN THE
AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Myth or Reality?
Jianyong Yue
Palgrave Studies in Economic History
Series editor
Kent Deng
London School of Economics
London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and
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the past. The series covers a vast range of topics including financial his-
tory, labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urban-
isation, industrialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in
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More information about this series at
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Jianyong Yue
China’s Rise in the
Age of Globalization
Myth or Reality?
Jianyong Yue
London School of Economics and Political Science
London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Economic History
ISBN 978-3-319-63996-3 ISBN 978-3-319-63997-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63997-0
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Acknowledgments
This book is developed on the basis of a Ph.D. thesis completed during
my studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(LSE). It is the result of a decade-long observation and intellectual think-
ing about the interactive relationship between China’s domestic politics
and international politics. My own experience as a manager in Chinese
and Western firms and as a journalist and political economy analyst in
domestic media provided me with a unique “insider advantage” in assess-
ing the gains and losses of China’s “reform and opening” from a scholar’s
as well as a practitioner’s perspective. Relevant research had been done
concerning globalization and China’s economic development and foreign
policy in the past two decades.
I am deeply grateful to my two supervisors, Dr. Chun Lin and Professor
Odd Arne Westad. Both scholars taught me how to make the thesis a
seminal work by broadening the theoretical perspective not limited to
political science but involving the paradigms of international relations
and development studies, and by having greater historical depth.
I am also very thankful to Professor Guoguang Wu (University of
Victoria), LSE Professors Kent Deng, Robert Wade, Michael Cox,
MacGregor Knox, David Held, Chris Alden, and Peter Wilson, and
Professor Peter Nolan (University of Cambridge). Discussions with them,
their advice on my work, and their outstanding academic contributions
v
vi Acknowledgments
in their respective fields are valuable sources of inspiration for my book
writing from a multidisciplinary perspective.
During the doctoral research and the book writing, in particular, I
interviewed a lot of old friends, who introduced me to new friends in
academia and government institutions. For understandable reasons, I
cannot divulge their names; however, I very much appreciate their enthu-
siastic assistance to my research. Also, I am very grateful to our depart-
ment’s Research Student Award and the Dorothy Hodgkin Award that
funded my research at LSE. Lastly, I am heavily indebted to my dear wife
Diana, who gave me love, confidence, and the most unselfish and warm-
hearted support. Without her, this book would never have been
completed.
About the Book
China’s reform and opening from the late 1970s is considered an irrevers-
ible process of the country’s integration into the capitalist world system.
After nearly 40 years of sustained rapid growth, China arguably has risen
by riding the waves of globalization and is poised to overtake the USA as
the new global hegemon in the not-too-distant future. Skeptical of this
“rise of China” thesis, this book will shed new light on the mystified
reform and opening process. The author argues that the particular way
the Chinese Communist regime quested for legitimacy after the
Tiananmen Incident in 1989 dramatically radicalized its previous experi-
ment of market socialism in the 1980s into an unbridled capitalism. By
politicizing growth performance as its top priority, the Chinese regime
implemented a de facto shock therapy reform from the mid-1990s
onward at the expense of social justice. Deng Xiaoping played a crucial
role in this transformative process. The demise of socialism and the soft-
ening of the strong Leninist party state as a result of state capture by the
nomenclatura elite fatally eroded the social and institutional foundations
for internal integration, making it extremely difficult for China to achieve
a self-sustaining growth on a self-reliant basis. Deeper integration into
the world economy, therefore, became the logical solution to achieving
an export-led growth. This was made possible by the regime’s renounce-
ment of economic nationalism that underpinned China’s national devel-
opment strategy throughout the 1990s in terms of ceasing import
vii
viii About the Book
substitution and liberalizing trade and investment on a massive scale in
exchange for wider access to developed countries’ markets. China’s radical
embrace of neoliberalism was well in line with the US grand strategy of
fully integrating China into the international system precisely through
globalizing the Chinese economy. The unholy alliance formed between
Chinese market Leninism and global capitalism led to crony comprador
capitalism flourishing at the turn of the century. Set on a dependent path
of development, China, despite having achieved an amazing Ricardian
growth miracle since the WTO accession in 2001, has failed thus far to
escape dependency in any meaningful way. Far from being an economic
success story, the incomplete economic transformation of China has
engendered increasing social and political instability, which as a conse-
quence prompted the Chinese regime’s intuitive “totalitarian turn.” This,
along with an illusory global power shift toward China, casts a shadow on
the country’s democratic transition and a lasting world peace. Nevertheless,
stuck in a quagmire of dependent development, what circumstances
would incentivize China to overturn the existing liberal order that has
enabled its “success”—and with which the market Leninist regime has
been deeply contented—remains an open question.
About the Boo k ix
Important Moments from Mao Zedong to Xi
Jinping
1949 The founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
1950 Sino-Soviet alliance
1950–1953 China joined the Korean War
1953–1956 The socialist transformation
1953–1957 The first “Five-Year Plan”
1958–1961 The Great Leap Forward
1966–1976 The Cultural Revolution
1969 Climax of Sino-Soviet split
1971 The PRC’s lawful seat in the United Nations restored
1972 Nixon visited China
1976 Death of Mao; the arrest of the Gang of Four; Hua Guofeng
as party chairman
1978 The Third Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee, reform
begins
1979 Sino-US diplomatic relations established; Deng Xiaoping
visited the USA; Sino-Vietnamese border war
1980 Chen Yun and “feeling the stone to cross the river”
1982 China’s “one-child policy”; Chen Yun’s “birdcage” theory
1984 Sino-UK agreement on handover of Hong Kong in 1997
1987 The 13th National Party’s Congress; Zhao Ziyang’s
“preliminary stage of socialism”
1989 Tiananmen crackdown; Zhao Ziyang was removed from the
General Secretary post; Jiang Zemin became the new
General Secretary
1992 Deng Xiaoping’s journeys to southern provinces; the 14th
National Party’s Congress: legalizing “market economy”
1993 Zhu Rongji’s market Leninist reform begins
1997 End of Deng Xiaoping era; the 15th National Party’s Congress;
UK handover of Hong Kong to China
1998 Zhu Rongji became Premier
1999 US bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade; Sino-US deal on
WTO
2000 Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” theory
2001 Sino-US relations improved after 9/11; China joined the WTO
2002 The 16th National Party’s Congress; Jiang Zemin stepped
down; Hu Jintao became the new General Secretary
2003 Zhu Rongji stepped down; Wen Jiabao became the new
Premier; Hu Jintao’s “scientific development outlook” and
“peaceful rise” of China
2004 Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society”
2005 First Sino-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) held in
Beijing