Globalization and the role of the state: Reflections on Chinese international and comparative political economy scholarship

Tianbiao Zhu and Margaret Pearson

Review of International Political Economy, 2013, vol. 20, issue 6, 1215-1243

Abstract: China's rapid integration into the global economy has had undeniable implications for the Chinese state - it raises questions about how the state has simultaneously encouraged globalization and, at the same time, tried to control for globalization's impact on China's economy, its culture, and on state policy and the state itself. These implications have not been lost on PRC-based scholars of international and comparative political economy, who have focused considerable - if, as we shall argue, incomplete - attention on globalization's challenge to state sovereignty, to economic sovereignty, and on the economic role of the state. The article highlights features of the Chinese scholarship that are quite distinctive. This literature reflexively favours a strong role for the state in the context of globalization. We also observe that the literature in general is not oriented to theory-building. Instead, scholarship is largely policy-driven; there is a strong impulse to provide positive policy advice to Chinese policy-makers. Most striking, the understanding of the state in the Chinese literature remains partial; there is a marked reluctance to delve into either empirical or theoretical study of the Chinese state itself - the state itself as a subject of critical analysis is rarely considered.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2013.773552

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