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1. State Capitalism, Imperialism, and China: Bringing History Back In

Author:
Isabella Weber
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
State capitalism is experiencing a great revival as a term to capture the current capitalist constellations, increasingly replacing neoliberalism. Unlike neoliberalism, however, the term state capitalism has a long history reaching back to the age of imperialism in the late 19th century. While state capitalism has been used as a pejorative term by Marxists, liberals and neoliberals alike, it has served as a programmatic label for developmentalist and neomercantilist projects in reaction to imperialism in the periphery. This paper argues that we need to bring the intellectual history of state capitalism into the ‘new state capitalism’ debate. China has played a major role in the revival of state capitalism in the social sciences, but the long history of China’s engagement with state capitalism as a concept and program dating back to the late Qing reformers has been overlooked for the most part. State capitalism is by no means new to China, from Liang Qichao, Sun Yatsen and Mao Zedong to Deng Xiaoping, the idea that China had to create a modern nation state and industrial capitalism in the name of economic progress and to get ahead in the global competition is a recurring theme. What is new is that for the first time the ambition to use state capitalism as a means to catch up with the West is bearing fruits in ways that could undermine the predominance of Western economies.
Topic:
Imperialism, Political Economy, History, Capitalism, and State Capitalism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Taxless fiscal states: Lessons from 19th-century America and 21st-century China

Author:
Yuen Yuen Ang
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states—exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England—paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and subsequent prosperity. Revisionist accounts, however, reveal that this dominant narrative is flawed. In fact, numerous factors converged to enable the rise of European fiscal states, and in England, debt and land were particularly salient factors. Building off this literature, I bring attention to the role of ‘taxless public financing’ (i.e. financing public infrastructure through means other than taxation) in the making of fiscal states in two seldom compared cases: 19th-century America and 21st-century China. Both countries relied heavily on taxless financing to launch an infrastructure boom that spurred rapid growth along with massive corruption and financial risks.
Topic:
History, Finance, Tax Systems, and Land
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

3. Righting a Wrong: Taiwan, the United Nations, and United States Policy

Author:
Michael Mazza and Gary J. Schmitt
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
Fifty years ago, on October 25, 1970, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 2758, which expelled “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” from the United Nations (UN) and gave the Republic of China’s seat to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For several years now, the UN has misread the resolution as meaning that Taiwan is a province of the PRC. Neither the resolution nor the UN Charter empowers the UN Secretary-General to make this determination. Quite to the contrary, as Michael Mazza and Gary Schmitt demonstrate in this report marking the 50th anniversary of Resolution 2758, Taiwan’s participation in the UN system would be in accord with international law and the interests of a globalized world. Absent greater flexibility from Beijing regarding Taiwan’s engagement with the UN, the authors argue, the United States should launch a full court press to achieve Taiwan’s formal membership.
Topic:
Diplomacy, United Nations, History, and International System
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, and United States of America

4. The (Im-)Possibility of Rational Socialism: Mises in China’s Market Reform Debate

Author:
Isabella Weber
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts Amherst
Abstract:
Investigate the long first decade of reform in China (1978-1992) to show that Mises, in particular his initiating contribution to the Socialist Calculation Debate, became relevant to the reconfiguration of China’s political economy when the reformers gave up on the late Maoist primacy of continuous revolution and adhered instead to an imperative of development and catching up. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao had rejected the notions of efficiency and rational economic management. In the late 1970s, the reformers under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership elevated these notions to highest principle. As a result, Mises’ critique that socialism could not achieve a rational economic order came to be debated throughout the 1980s and Chinese economists developed their own reading of Mises and the Socialist Calculation Debate. When Deng Xiaoping reinstated market reforms in the early 1990s after the Tiananmen crackdown, a history of thought review of the possibility of rational socialism and socialist markets helped to justify the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics the official designation of China’s economic system to this day.
Topic:
Markets, History, Reform, Economy, and Socialism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

5. From the EMS to the EMU and...to China

Author:
Joseph Halevi
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The paper highlights the position of German authorities, showing that they were quite lucid about the fundamental weaknesses inherent in a process that separated monetary from fiscal policies by giving priority to the centralization of the former. Instead of repeating the well known critiques levelled against the EMU – for which readers are referred to the unsurpassed treatment by Stiglitz, the essay highlights the splintering of Europe in the way in which it has unfolded during the 1990s and in the first decade of the present millennium. In particular the early economic and political origins of the terminal crisis of Italy are located between the late 1980s and the 1990s. France is shown to belong increasingly to the so-called European periphery by virtue of a weakening industrial structure and persistent balance of payments deficits. The paper argues that France regains its central role by political means and through its weight as an active nuclear military power centered on maintaining its imperial interests and posture especially in Africa. The first decade of the present millennium is portrayed as the period in which a distinct German economic area had been formed in the midst of Europe with a strong drive to the east with an increasingly powerful gravitational pull towards the People’s Republic of China.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Political Economy, History, and Macroeconomics
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Europe, Asia, Germany, and Global Focus

6. Forty Years Development of China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment: Retrospect and the Challenges Ahead

Author:
Tao Wang and Kailin Gao
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) has increasingly become an importantmethod for China to integrate into the world economy. This paper comprehensivelyreviews and analyses policy development and the changing pattern of China’s OFDIover the past 40 years. We divide the development into “restricted” (1978–1999), “relaxed” (2000–2016) and “regulated” (2017 onwards) stages. This paper alsoreviews literature on the impact of Chinese OFDI on China and host countries. Despite its generally positive ef ects, large-scale and unbalanced OFDI activitieshave alarmed Chinese policy-makers. Both developing and developed host countrieshave expressed their concern over national security and the misbehavior of someChinese overseas enterprises. Therefore, greater supervision and adjustment fromquantity to quality growth is necessary for the future development of China’s OFDI.
Topic:
Development, History, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
China and Asia

7. The People’s Republic of China and Burma: Not Only Pauk-Phaw

Author:
Bertil Lintner
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
Pauk-Phaw was a term coined in the 1950s to describe the supposedly friendly and close relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Burma. But despite such diplomatic niceties, relations between China and Burma have not always been especially cordial. China, a vast, mainly inland, empire, has always looked for outlets to the sea for its land-locked western and southwestern provinces. China will not easily give up its hard-won access to the Indian Ocean and Burma’s strategic importance to Beijing cannot be overestimated. As China sees it, it cannot simply “hand over” Burma to the West. The country is far too important strategically and economically to the PRC for that to happen.
Topic:
Diplomacy, History, Bilateral Relations, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Burma

8. The Logic of Historical Nihilism: Analyzing the PRC Orthodoxy on the Origins of the Korean War

Author:
Miles M. Yu
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) utilizes its own narrative of the Korean War to fulfill the Party’s strategic interests. Historical evidence, illustrated in this paper, proves that the Korean War began on June 25, 1950 as a result of a long and arduous preparation and agreement among the three protagonists—Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Kim Il-sung. Today, significant research and historical documents prove the CCP’s creation of a false record of the Korean War, which remains integral to Maoist historical nihilism and employed by the Party to ensure regime survival. Following the 67th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, it is necessary to examine the Korean War’s historical legacy and the role of the manipulation of historical narratives in communist China.
Topic:
War, History, Political Parties, and Narrative
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South Korea, and North Korea

9. Dangerous Truths: The Panchen Lama’s 1962 Report and China’s Broken Promise of Tibetan Autonomy

Author:
Matthew Akester
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sustained a strategy to manipulate history and subjugate Tibet in order to maintain Party rule. As outlined in this paper, the CCP’s tactics against Tibet can be evidenced through its denial of a report critical of the Party’s policies, authored by the 10th Panchen Lama in 1962. Through an analysis of the historical context surrounding the CCP’s repudiation of this report, and the Party’s resulting efforts to erase the grievances of the Tibetan people while imposing its own narrative, it is clear that the CCP views nationalist sentiment in Tibet as inimical to social stability. To counter that threat, the Party requires the active suppression and political compliance of the Tibetan people. Due to the CCP’s efforts, it is necessary to uncover the true historical record that proves the Party’s attempts to distort history and dominate Tibet for its own strategic ends.
Topic:
History, Territorial Disputes, Repression, and Autonomy
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Tibet

10. Negotiating History: The Chinese Communist Party’s 1981

Author:
Robert L. Suettinger
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
Over the decades, leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have used the control of history to bolster their own political standing, as well as the continued primacy of the CCP in ruling the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This paper illustrates one of the most important cases of CCP historical manipulation through analysis of the political process surrounding the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.” From 1979-1981, Deng Xiaoping used his ability to control what would become the CCP’s official verdict on Mao Zedong’s legacy to supplant Mao’s appointed successor, Hua Guofeng. The ability to control history to maintain the CCP’s political legitimacy has undeniably become a tool of power in the PRC. As the influence of the Chinese government and the CCP increasingly spreads abroad, it is important to understand how the CCP arrived at the “history” it exports.
Topic:
Politics, Geopolitics, History, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Narrative
Political Geography:
China and Asia