Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2018. 224 pp. (Tables.) US$120.00, cloth. ISBN 978 1 78471 490 1.
Gordon C.K. Cheung’s book provides a timely publication addressing China’s economic rise, maintaining that its global economic presence is increasingly influenced by its policy push for an innovation-driven growth model. The early 2010s saw the unveiling of China’s grand globalization strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), coinciding with the United States’ adoption of an “America First” policy that many interpreted as a signal to retreat from international arenas. Cheung’s book comes at a time when many scholars and policy makers are pondering if the United States is indeed ceding its economic authority to China.
While the notion of China as an emerging economic power is not new, China’s global influence has long been attributed to its role as the world’s factory. Since the late 2000s, particularly following the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo, as labour-intensive low-tech manufacturing has relocated to neighbouring countries that offer a much lower labour cost, China has prioritized an innovation-driven growth model characterized by a strong entrepreneurial spirit. A decade has passed since China’s economic policy shift, and Cheung recognizes the pressing need to re-evaluate China’s position in the international system.
Cheung’s book is well-structured, consisting of two parts: the first three chapters deal with the general processes behind China’s emerging economic influence in the global political economy, while the second part introduces three case studies to examine China’s engagement with the world economy in three areas of national interest. With much information from his own fieldwork as well as the use of secondary sources, Cheung makes important empirical contributions to understanding China’s role in the global political economy.
In the first three chapters, Cheung dissects three geopolitical processes behind China’s elevated global influence. Chapter 1 concerns the decline of US economic influence, as Cheung reminds readers that the extraordinary East Asian economic growth of the postwar period is closely linked to the US containment strategy. Noting the inability of the US to sustain regional prosperity in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis, Cheung determines that China’s growing economic capability “gradually translated into regional and even global aspiration for some fundamental changes of the global economic leadership towards an alternative paradigm” (27).
Chapter 2 focuses on the issue of soft power. Although Cheung identifies the shared economic values of Confucianism as a major source of China’s soft power, he acknowledges that “the sense of growth and economic development is less present in the original spirit of Confucius” (49). Cheung also turns to China’s deliberate efforts to construct soft power. In this respect, he provides excellent documentation of a series of global influence campaigns that sought to reinterpret East Asian history, penetrate academic discourse, and influence international broadcasting.
Chapter 3 illustrates an economic process behind China’s rise, which is China’s journey to transform its economy from developmental to entrepreneurial. Cheung’s claim that “China is working to use creativity and innovation for a new mode of economic development” (55) is fleshed out through three detailed cases: China’s innovation push demonstrated in the case of Shenzhen as an innovation city; the booming of the Chinese e-commerce sector as a symbol of China’s grassroots entrepreneurship; and the attempt to enhance human capital, demonstrated by Suzhou Industrial Park and China’s international partnerships in higher education programs. These cases illustrate several angles to China’s innovation-based strategy and lend themselves well to Cheung’s analysis of China’s economic transformation.
In the second half of the book, Cheung analyzes three specific examples of China’s recent economic engagement in the international community. The selected areas are all of great importance for China’s future economic development and geopolitical position in the global political economy. The first is the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR). Cheung investigates China’s burgeoning innovation protection by touching upon counterfeiting and infringement cases, IPR disputes and monitoring between China and the US, and IPR protection at both the national and provincial levels. The second issue concerns China’s attempt to claim global financial leadership, which Cheung illustrates with the development of Shanghai as a financial sector following the 2008–2009 global financial crisis; the internationalization of the Renminbi is also discussed.
In perhaps his most thought-provoking chapter, Cheung tackles China’s outward foreign investment, scrutinizing China’s sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), the BRI, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Here he puts forward the innovative interpretation that China’s enthusiasm for overseas infrastructure development projects can help narrow the global equality gap. On this point, he clashes with the popular view that Chinese investment can stick developing countries in a “debt trap.” In the book’s conclusion, he coins the term “goodwill generation” (159) to refer to China’s global engagement. This term accurately sums up China’s intention to seek greater global influence not by traditional military means but through soft power construction that relies on social and economic exchanges (for example, trade and investment).
Cheung’s book is not without its shortcomings, and two defects in his analysis merit attention. First, Cheung’s analysis of China’s economic transformation seems less enlightening than his take on the geopolitical transformation; for example, he pays little attention to the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that are heralded as major instruments of the government to accomplish industrial upgrading and globalization projects. Also, I would have liked some discussion of the transformation of the Chinese government’s role in managing innovation-based industrial development. Second, Cheung does not assess the significant resistance to China’s economic outreach, and he ignores the prevalence of BRI project delays and widespread scepticism of Chinese investment activities. Touching upon this negativity would speak directly to the questions Cheung raises: Is the US ceding its economic power to China? More critically, will the world accept China’s economic authority?
Despite these shortcomings, Cheung makes a timely contribution to better understanding China’s evolving role in the new global political economy. This book will prove useful and accessible for both China specialists and those who have relatively little understanding of the country’s economy and global influence.
Tian He
Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China