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Over more than thirty years of reform and opening, the Chinese Communist Party has pursued the gradual marketization of China’s economy alongside the preservation of a resiliently authoritarian political system, defying long-standing predictions that ‘transition’ to a market economy would catalyse deeper political transformation. In an era of deepening synergy between authoritarian politics and finance capitalism, Communists constructing capitalism offers a novel and important perspective on this central dilemma of contemporary Chinese development. This book challenges existing state–market paradigms of political economy and reveals the Eurocentric assumptions of liberal scepticism towards Chinese authoritarian resilience. It works with an alternative conceptual vocabulary for analysing the political economy of financial development as both the management and exploitation of socio-economic uncertainty. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork and over sixty interviews with policymakers, bankers, and former party and state officials, the book delves into the role of China’s state-owned banking system since 1989. It shows how political control over capital has been central to China’s experience of capitalist development, enabling both rapid economic growth whilst preserving macroeconomic and political stability. Communists constructing capitalism will be of academic interest to scholars and graduate students in the fields of Chinese studies, social studies of finance, and international and comparative political economy. Beyond academia, it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of Chinese capitalism and its implications for an increasingly central issue in contemporary global politics: the financial foundations of illiberal capitalism.
significant turning point in relations between the CWC and the state, was the initial proposal for Targeted Investment in Disadvantaged Areas (TIDA) or, as it became, Revitalising Areas through Planning, Investment and Development (RAPID), and the subsequent difficulties over its implementation. This is dealt with in detail because it marks the start of a long-term push to re-assert the prerogative of representative government – central and local – over what was by then a substantial parallel infrastructure of local development with ‘participative’ governance and
views the cultural and economic specificity of particular places as being deployed as part of a broader articulation of resistance to the space of flows, that is capital investments and developments increasingly detached through the use of information technologies, from the social constraints of cultural identities and local societies. However, place-based struggles can be both offensive and defensive with regard to the emergent spaces of globalisation. For example, the Zapatista peasant insurgency in Chiapas, Mexico, has been exemplary in the scaling up of its
upcoming grants for funds.4 One of the sources of funding that was established during the course of my fieldwork was an organisation called the ‘Low Carbon Hub’. It was understood among members of the environmental strategy team whom I spoke to, that city leaders had been able to negotiate central government money to establish Greater Manchester as a centre for low carbon investment and development. The Low Carbon Hub was one part of a broader agreement called the City Deal which had been brokered by Leese and Bernstein to ensure central government support for Manchester
’. This is one of a number of different quasi-public institutions in Manchester that form part of what is known amongst some students of city politics as ‘the Manchester family’, which also includes agencies such as MIDAS (Manchester’s Inward Investment and Development Agency) and New Economy (Headlam 2014). Charged with responsibility for the promotion of the city on a national and international stage, the publications and activities of Marketing Manchester prove instructive. Their highly stylised publications and promotional material are full of the language of
/6/12 12:45 Page 119 119 remarked to us, ‘Education means everything to African families. We have our own ethos for schools: it’s not by their colour that balloons fly, it’s by their contents!’ Notes 1 The first volume was initially launched in 2007. 2 The RAPID Programme (Revitalising Areas through Planning Investment and Development) was launched in 2002 with the aim of delivering priority investment to designated disadvantaged areas. The term disadvantaged as used herein may refer to designated disadvantaged areas or to ‘disadvantaged schools.’ The Department of
to engage with the principles of communitarianism. Pobal was established by government as a limited company to manage Irish and EU funds, promoting a wide range of initiatives operating in marginalised communities, including: community graffiti reduction programmes; RAPID (revitalising communities by planning, investment and development); dormant accounts; grants for community and voluntary organisations; community services programme; community- based CCTV scheme and the local development social inclusion programme.16 Also, the Irish Youth Justice Service
Employment Service (LES); review of Social Economy and Basic Income (BI) ideas; measures on educational disadvantage Social spending envelope of €1.5 billion; tax and welfare reform for low paid; minimum wage from 2000; review group on indexing social welfare to earnings; Revitalising Areas through Planning, Investment and Development (RAPID) programme; Child Care strategy formulation; educational disadvantage package; No new money promised; support of NAPS target of € 150 p/w (2002 prices) by 2007; 10 special initiatives: Housing and Accommodation; Insurance; Migration
.80%) Tetrad Ventures Pty Ltd (3.07%) Fujian Tobacco Haisheng Investment Management Co. Ltd. (2.73%) COFCO Ltd. (1.78%) Huaxia Bank Shougang Corporation (13.98%) State Grid Corporation of China (11.94%) Deutsche Bank (11.27%) Hongta Tobacco Group Co. Ltd (6.00%) Runhua Group Co. Ltd (4.88%) China Merchants Bank HKSCC Nominees Ltd (17.86%) China Merchants Steam Navigation Co. Ltd (12.40%) China Ocean Shipping Co. (6.22%) Shenzhen Yan Qing Investment and Development Co. (2.95%) Guangzhou Maritime Transport Company (2.93%) Source: Annual Reports, various years