Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xvi, 252 pp. (Tables, figures, map.) US$114.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-108-47956-1.
Scholars have undertaken many studies on the political economy of development in China since the late 1970s, including assessments of the major development initiatives. In particular, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was launched in 2013 by Xi Jinping, China’s president, remains a hot topic for both academia and the policy research community with an interest in China, regionwide as well as worldwide.
To distinguish this volume from the bulk of other previous works, Min Ye’s book, The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998—2018, uses state-mobilized globalization as an investigative framework for discussing the interaction between China’s internal political economy and its major development initiatives, focusing on the Western Development Program (WDP), China Goes Global (CGG) strategy, and the BRI. I therefore commend Ye’s book as a welcome publication in terms of helping its readers understand the internal factors at play in China’s major development initiatives. In contrast to the many previous studies that have analyzed the BRI from the perspective of the rise of China and its aspiration to reshape regional and global governance, Ye’s book seeks to examine Chinese development initiatives by addressing political and economic factors inside China.
This book focuses on the complex interplay between Chinese leaders, central ministries, local governments, and companies involved in development initiatives, and provides helpful information for readers interested in China’s political economy. In the first part of the book, the author presents the theory of state-mobilized globalization and its implications for policy analysis. In the second part, the book zooms in on the three selected case studies of Chinese development initiatives. In the third part of the book, the author further examines the role of subnational actors, including local governments and commercial companies, in driving forward Chinese initiatives, in addition to their progression and development outcomes.
My criticisms of this book relate to three areas. First, on the real drivers of the BRI, the author repeatedly attributes its development to the crises affecting the Chinese state and economy. For example, in the first paragraph of chapter 1, the author states, “In 2012-2013, the Chinese state was in a state of crisis” (3), and then goes on to claim, “[i]t establishes that crises, along with national agencies’ inability to handle them, have compelled and enabled the political leadership to announce the BRI” (26). According to the author, these crises compelled China’s authoritarian leaders to announce these ambitious initiatives. However, this claim is exaggerated and self-perpetuated.
To justify her claim, the author argues that the Chinese state was in crisis due to the rampant corruption involving high-ranking officials, the underperformance of state-owned enterprises, a domestic economic slowdown, and industrial overcapacity. It is indeed fair to say that China experienced various serious challenges and problems during the 1998–2018 period. Nevertheless, these political and economic issues (but not crises) inside China first surfaced decades ago, accompanying the reform and opening up in the late 1970s, and they still exist today. These issues facing the Chinese government were not unique to the 1998–2018 period. Moreover, many countries around the world are affected by such issues. It is surprising that despite the various domestic challenges, China has not only achieved resilient economic development, but also maintained social stability and political unity over the past decades.
Against the backdrop of China’s emergence as a superpower—albeit one that is largely underrepresented in global governance—the drive for the BRI has been primarily motivated by China’s determination to play a greater role in global affairs and to reshape the global governance system. It has also been partially driven by China’s need to deal with domestic production overcapacity by securing wider access to emerging markets for Chinese-made products and investment. In a nutshell, the origins and implementation of the BRI are inextricably bound up with China’s foreign and domestic development imperatives.
Hence, the book’s claim that the BRI was primarily motivated by internal crises is based on an incorrect and woefully incomplete assessment. Although it is fair to argue that domestic conditions hold the key to China’s global ambitions in regards to initiatives such as the BRI, the author greatly underestimates the impact of fast-changing global geo-political and geo-economic conditions. While domestic factors and the quest for external development are not mutually exclusive, it is wrong to claim that internal factors predominate over other external factors in driving development initiatives such as the CGG and the BRI.
Second, the author fails to distinguish the differences in nature and characteristics between the WDP and the BRI. They are not replications of each other. Regarding the WDP, it is basically a domestic development strategy that was designed to address China’s vast regional development disparities by shoring up the landlocked western provinces in China. Meanwhile, the BRI is a globally oriented development initiative, to which a total of 139 countries have already signed up, including China. The BRI has constituted the core of China’s pro-active foreign policy under Xi Jinping, and is the most ambitious foreign policy initiative announced by China so far.
Last but not least, it is misleading to argue that the Chinese Marshall Plan proposal was a precursor to the BRI, as has been promoted and discussed by groups within academia. The BRI can be distinguished from the American Marshall Plan on the following grounds: first, its geographical coverage; second, its scope of implementation (from infrastructure connectivity, industrial cooperation, and tourism to the health and digital arena); and third, the scale of investment involved.
In the case of such a high-profile and ambitious development initiative, focusing on one particular driver could easily lead to the omission of others. The analysis of the BRI presented in this book is simplified. Despite these limitations, this book adds a new perspective to the contributions made by other publications in China and abroad by seeking to understand the interaction among China’s political economy and its development initiatives in light of important domestic drivers and the internal institutional environment.
Hong Yu
National University of Singapore, Singapore