Globalization with Chinese Characteristics: Externalization, Dynamics and Transformations

Abstract

This article introduces a special issue on globalization ‘with Chinese characteristics’, but also makes its own contribution to the debates. It does so by focusing on the implications of China's rise for the nature and consequences of globalization as a distinct formation. It argues that globalization needs to be understood, in part, as the externalization of particular national forms of capitalism in particular historical periods. In this context, it explores the Chinese form in some detail, arguing that this form is likely to provide much of the initial character of a new, emergent version of globalization now in train. The ways China (and other ‘rising powers’) are beginning to impact other parts of the developing world presages the need for a new approach to the analysis of ‘development’. This article is critical of traditional discourses, and argues that innovation around the concept of ‘transformation’, including a focus on ‘conjunctures of critical transformation’, may lead to more appropriate and adequate analyses of development and open up those analyses more effectively to ‘non‐Western’ voices. The authors discuss the ‘vectors’ by which China's externalization is transforming the developing world. They mobilize arguments from the other articles in the special issue, in order both to introduce their contributions to the relevant debates and to use their arguments as materials for the particular contribution this article provides.

Rising Power Clusters and the Challenges of Local and Global Standards

“…The literature on the emerging economies, variously described as the 'BRICs', the 'Asian Drivers' or more aptly the 'Rising Powers', is rapidly growing (Kaplinsky and Messner 2008;Henderson and Nadvi 2011;Henderson et al 2013;Lund-Thomsen and Wad 2014;Nadvi 2014). While there are no singular definitions of what constitutes an 'emerging economy' there is no dispute that China, and to a lesser extent India and Brazil, are now key global economic powers.…”

On the edge of fluidity: international cooperation in turbulent times

“…Conceiving of development as played out in fluid space would turn attention of development scholars towards the manifestations of turbulence, transgressions, open trajectories and transformations (see also Henderson et al, 2013). Here trajectories are not the movement of things (for instance the immutable mobiles of Latour) but are reconfigurations of relations (the Deleuzian haecceities 255 ).…”

“…Topological ontology can shed new insight on the nature of things, un-things and processes of thinging. Topological thinking enables a conception of change as neither incremental growth 333 nor transition 334 but as enfolding transgression and transformation (Henderson et al, 2013). Based on this notion of topological ontology, change, development and modernisation are redefined as 'becoming'.…”

“…The change taking place looks more like an exploratory transformation with an open end (see also Henderson et al, 2013). It is a process of becoming.…”

“…In topological space, development is not linear progress or a transition towards a known end-stage (the developed) yet it is a transformation (Henderson et al, 2013) or constant becoming with no clear form and destiny (sometimes not even a clear point of departure). It is a movement or trajectory in-between points 280 and not from one point to another.…”