The institutional contours of China’s emergent capitalism

Abstract

This chapter will undertake a more expansive analysis. It will map the unique institutional arrangements permeating China's budding capitalism. The focus will rest particularly on how state and capital institutionally interact and shape China's political economy. The next section will briefly introduce the conceptual approach taken in this chapter - the capitalist institutional lens. I will then elucidate what I hold are the three most salient institutional contours of China's emergent capitalism: "network capitalism"; the rapid absorption of China into the "new global capitalismn; and the distinctive role of state institutions in China's capitalist development. In the concluding remarks I will comment on China's long historical trajectory and argue that contemporary statecapital relations possess certain parallels to those characterizing China's imperial political economy over the past 1,000 years. However, due to the contemporary international environment this historical trajectory is likely to be broken.