ABSTRACT
The theme issue 'Making Space for the New State Capitalism' brings together insights from critical economic geography and heterodox political economy through a series of papers published in three installments, each accompanied by an introductory essay written by the guest editors. In this, the second of these introductory commentaries, we explore the consequences of embracing relationality, spatiotemporality and uneven development, together with the second group of papers. Introducing a final group of papers, the third installment will address the challenges and opportunities of thinking conjuncturally.
ABSTRACT
Official discourses of Development are being redefined. If the key geopolitical contexts shaping the post-war Development project were decolonisation and the Cold War, the defining world-historical transformations shaping the emerging vision of Development are the expansion of state capitalism and the rise of China. The IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, the G20, other multilaterals, and bilateral partners are increasingly taking stock of the rise of state capitalism, and acting as ideational vectors of this emerging regime. However, this new "state capitalist normal" is also portrayed as carrying risks. There is anxiety regarding the direction the political form of global capital accumulation is heading: with the unchecked proliferation of state capitalism possibly blunting competition, politicising economic relations, and intensifying geoeconomic tensions. This anxiety underwrites the current re-articulation of Development, one which embraces the state as promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital; even as it critiques China's use of similar instruments.
ABSTRACT
Increasing Chinese investment has raised the spectre of strategic state influence in Europe, yet the transformative potential of state capital as a global phenomenon remains under-explored. This article sheds light on the dual imperatives of transnationalizing state capital wherein the movement of capital entails both profit maximization and the extra-profit interests of the state. State-capitalist entities such as sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are both market-facing and politically driven, disrupting ideological norms surrounding the strictly safe-keeper role of the state in private capital accumulation. The authors draw on the case of the China Investment Corporation, China's premier SWF, to argue that the transnationalization of state capital is a process deeply embedded in the liberal international order, and that it signals the metamorphosis of global capitalism in palimpsest-like ways. The global financial professions, namely investment banking, corporate law and management consulting along with other advisory services, have legitimated state capital by normalizing its political origins through technocratic, expert-driven practice to the effect that it is treated as no different from private capital in global capital networks. The article identifies three logics of practice by which professionals legitimate state capital: adoption, alliance and recreation of financial practices that have facilitated the embeddedness of state capital in global markets.
