Win-Win Cooperation for Who? The Political Economy of State-Business Relations in Global China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- China’s increased global engagement has animated debate among policymakers and academics alike. Prevailing analyses of China’s role in the world tend to frame China as a unitary actor under the control of Beijing. This thesis offers an alternative, granular approach to assessing the incentives and constraints that drive political economic activity in “Global China.” Drawing on foundational concepts from property rights theory, transaction cost economics, and agency theory, I introduce the “global state corporatism” model through which to analyze the complex set of actors, interests, and interdependencies subsumed within Global China. I conceptualize China’s state sector as a large corporation characterized by a series of nested principal-agent relationships. Within this structure, Beijing, local governments, and firms each have their own set of interests; when the interests of one actor are in conflict with another, principals are more likely to incur agency costs. This thesis draws on one case study of fiscal reforms to China’s export taxes and two case studies of Chinese firms operating in Ghana to interrogate the proposed model of global state corporatism. Perhaps the most important contribution of this work is my analysis of the fiscal reforms to the export VAT rebate mechanism. Previously unexplored, the export VAT rebate mechanism provides a specific political economic rationale behind local governments’ enthusiasm to participate in China’s internationalization initiatives. The logic of the export VAT rebate mechanism provides new alternative explanations for several key trade statistics in China. Finally, I demonstrate how host countries can exploit Global China’s nested principal-agent structure to exert significant agency in shaping outcomes from China’s engagement.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | September 1, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | McFaul, Cole |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | China |
|---|---|
| Subject | Belt and Road Initiative |
| Subject | Intergovernmental fiscal relations |
| Subject | Central-local government relations |
| Subject | China-Africa Relations |
| Subject | Agency costs |
| Subject | Property rights |
| Subject | Transaction cost economics |
| Subject | China-Ghana Relations |
| Subject | China political economy |
| Subject | Going Out Strategy |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- McFaul, C. (2023). Win-Win Cooperation for Who? The Political Economy of State-Business Relations in Global China. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/rg533yy9877. https://doi.org/10.25740/rg533yy9877.
Collection
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection
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- Contact
- cole.mcfaul@gmail.com
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