China/Europe and the Changing Global Order seminar series: China’s State Capitalism: Mechanisms of Party-State Influence and Degrees of State Penetration in the Chinese Economy

China’s emergence and growing footprint across the world has spawned much debate on its implications for the global order. To analyse these debates and illuminate the underlying issues, The Open University’s 'Reorienting development: The dynamics and effects of Chinese infrastructure investments in Europe (REDEFINE)' project; the University of York’s 'The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe (PoliCIE)'; and the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN) are co-organising this series of events. We envisage these events to offer a platform for learning and sharing for students and early career researchers in the social sciences and allied disciplines.

The series is informed by four themes, as below:

• To what extent does China’s growing presence in and engagement with the global North and global South reshape the liberal international order?
• What does China’s rise do for concepts like the global South and how can we more effectively study the political economies of societies of the so-called global South?
• What does China’s entry into Europe mean for European identity and how can we more effectively study the political economies of European societies?
• What methodological opportunities and challenges does researching China in Europe pose for collaborative knowledge creation?

Each event will typically entail a presentation by a graduate student or early career scholar followed by comments by an established academic.

Audience Q&A will follow

Come along to our next seminar on the 8th September from 12:30 to 14:00 (BST)and hear Philipp Koencke, from Universität Erfurt, Germany and Lucas Erlbacher, from Freie Universität Berlin speak on;

'China's State Capitalism: Mechanisms of Party-State Influence and Degrees of State Penetration in the Chinese Economy'

Abstract

Growing geo-economic tensions between liberal-western powers and China are closely related to the peculiarities of China’s political-economic system, especially to the central role of the party-state in directing economic activity. Party-state apparatuses influence corporate decisions via various mechanisms: apart from far-reaching industrial policy, extensive regulatory capacities and the widespread state-ownership of companies, soft forms of influence such as the dissemination of party cells within companies play a key role in governing corporate decisions. This paper aims to examine the magnitude and functioning of different mechanisms of party-state influence on corporate decisions empirically. The analysis is predicated on the construction of a data bank on the Chinese Top 500 enterprises, containing information on ownership structures, economic performance, party cells and interpersonal networks between influential company representatives and party-state officials. Theoretical concepts from Comparative Capitalism Research, Critical Political Economy and Economic Sociology on institutional particularities in China’s capitalism, state-capital-interdependencies and concrete modes of party-state governance mechanisms will be employed to interpret empirical findings. We argue that the party-state penetration in China’s capitalism proceeds gradually: companies exhibit varying degrees of autonomy depending on the extent to which they are exposed to different types of party-state influence. This gradual state penetration constitutes a multi layered economic structure, with party-state governance following specific logics in the respective layers