The China Financial Model: China Development Bank, Politics, and China’s Global Financial Power
Abstract: Political analyses of the reform period China are plentiful, and for each analysis, there seems to be another version of a “China Model” or “Beijing Consensus” for economic and social development. This paper argues that these vague conceptualizations need to be rooted in empirical observations; they need to be products of induction rather than deductive processes that reiterate the preconceptions of any given author. This paper pursues the state financial side of China’s development, focused primarily on the China Development Bank (CDB) and its massive operations domestically and abroad, and their implications for international politics and economics and theories of China’s development model. The paper aims not to produce a novel and comprehensive model, but to illustrate and argue for one fundamental pillar of the model to be built on findings from modern Chinese state finance. The paper examines CDB, historically, domestically, and internationally, and suggests an essential starting point in Chinese state finance. The research uses sources from government, interviews, academia, and publicly available literature. The findings illustrate the size and importance of CDB in almost all “hot” areas of China’s foreign policy (FDI, resources, Cross-Strait relations, etc.) and the pragmatism and flexibility of China’s global financial power. Furthermore, the paper assuages some concerns about radical changes and “locking-up” of resource by China. However, the paper illustrates a very real potential for disruption of standard sovereign borrowing practices of resource-rich developing countries. The paper also examines the “theory” of good governance, and finds it lacking both in substantive powers of extrapolation and robustness as a viable theory of development for foreign recipient countries of CDB’s financing.
AT THIS PAGE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ESSAY. (follow the link to the next page)