are critical of the lack of effort to propose theory-based generalizations about the development of China, its dynamics, and its paradoxes. Political scientist David Shambaugh, former publisher of the China Quarterly, a leading scholarly journal in its field, describes this problem as “pervasive myopia and failure to generalize about ‘China.’ The field is, in my view, far too micro-oriented in its foci…. China scholars today know ‘more and more about less and less’ and see research methodologies as an end in itself rather than as a means to generate broader observations…. The result has been an unfortunate losing of the forest for the trees. Having deconstructed China over the past two decades in such considerable detail, scholars should begin to put the pieces of China back together again and offer generalizations about ‘China’ writ large” (Shambaugh 2009a, 916).
In many respects, China research presents factors that have contributed to economic growth, for example, only to then qualify them with a series of other well-founded arguments. This phenomenon could be attributed to China’s continental scale and heterogeneity. However, it might also be explained by the excessive weight given to individual empirical positions, as argued by economic sociologists Fligstein and Zhang: “Given there is some empirical support for all these positions, this implies that the empirical work is probably based on a non-random or narrow sample…. This reflects the limits of empirical study and the lack of systematic, overarching theoretical thinking about what is happening” (Fligstein and Zhang 2011, 41).
In the light of this, highly promising analytical perspectives from political economy were recently applied for the first time in China research. The present analysis sets itself the challenge of systematically examining China’s growth dynamics through a political economy lens. Although the term capitalism crops up in more recent studies on China, it is not generally conceptualized in detail. Even where there are more in-depth descriptions of the concept, “capitalism” is repeatedly reduced to “market economy,” or the term is reserved for describing the behavior of individual social groups—the networks of overseas Chinese, other foreign investors, or the new private entrepreneurs in mainland China. But how should the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the political institutions of the party-state be depicted? Are we seeing the development of a “hybrid” capitalist-socialist transitional system in China? Do we have to subdivide the economy into capitalist private sectors and quasisocialist state sectors because public property is inherently noncapitalist? How does China’s social order differ from other forms of capitalism and catch-up processes? What advantages did this social order enjoy over other emerging nations?
To address these and the other related questions mentioned at the outset, in the following sections, I outline a practicable approach. I begin with a discussion of relevant research works and research needs.
State of the Art and Research Needs
My objective is to identify the key features of the new Chinese economy, its driving forces, and paradoxes. To do this, I combine a range of theoretical insights to create a flexible set of analytical tools.1 In order to do justice to the problems being addressed, I draw on empirical knowledge and innovative theoretical instruments that have so far rarely been associated with one another or interlinked across disciplines.
(1) Of central importance here is China research in the social sciences. A vast spectrum of academic literature, particularly from the Anglophone world with contributions from Chinese scholars, provides sound analysis. Research studies in this field depict different dimensions of the Chinese system.2 The interface between the social and economic sciences and sinology has also been the subject of some significant research work by a number of German academics over the last few decades.3
(2) A strand of theoretical analysis that has rarely been associated with the field of China research is comparative political economy (CPE). Comparative analysis of Western capitalisms in the field of political economy, conducted by political scientists and economic sociologists, has now achieved canonical status. However, the use of CPE approaches for countries outside the OECD is a relatively recent phenomenon. Up until the 2010s, analysis of this type with a focus on China was rare (see Ahrens and Jünemann 2006; Chu 2010; McNally 2007a; Wilson 2007a). An interesting component of this strand of analysis is that it results in observations that go beyond business-centered studies.4 These theories draw on insights that promote an understanding of the historical processes of business and market expansion in their wider institutional context. They invariably capture economic processes in terms of their relationship with the state and other noneconomic institutions. A valid point of departure to help us distinguish between the different varieties or variegations of capitalism is the reality of spatiotemporal inequalities in the regional subsystems of the global economy. The hypothesis that there are diverse types of capitalism that all develop their own characteristic features is an important basis for the present analysis.
Political economy approaches also give us an insight into the uneven geographies of crisis dynamics in national economies and the sociostructural conflicts of modern societies. These are manifested in tensions between market expansion and social integration (see R. Brenner 2006; Deutschmann 2009b; Dörre, Lessenich, and Rosa 2009; Streeck 2010a, 2010b). The assumption that the dynamics of capitalist social orders are unstable is paramount to this work. As there have been barely any studies of this kind in research on China (a country that regularly shows very rapid dynamics of change), the present work fills a gap in the literature. Contrary to the rampant Sinomania where GDP growth rates are prematurely extrapolated (Jacques 2009), I would like to examine the specific destabilization dynamics characteristic of the Chinese process of development.
(3) At the same time, there are also various instructive institutionalist concepts available that could be used to analyze gradual institutional change—to be understood in this context as socioeconomic and political change below the threshold of system change (see Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Streeck and Thelen 2005). These tools have only been applied to China’s process of transformation in a small number of isolated cases, however (see Tsai 2007; Young 2011). This applies to a similar extent to pertinent new research on the transformation of the state in an age of globalization, the concept of multilevel governance, and analysis on local statehood and other noneconomic institutions (Benz 2009; Brand 2006; N. Brenner 2004; Block 1994; Jessop 2007; Leibfried and Zürn 2006; Mackert 2006; Thompson et al. 1991). There is also a body of transformation research in former Stalinist countries (Eyal, Szelényi, and Townsley 2000; King and Szelényi 2005; Lane and Myant 2007) and various studies examining the processes of industrialization in the East Asian developmental states that refer to both similarities and striking differences between the different types of “Asian” capitalism (see Deyo 1993; Evans 1995; Hamilton and Biggart 1997; Pohlmann 2002; Wade 1990).
(4) The discipline of international political economy (IPE) provides us with insights that focus on the rise of China against a background of global economic restructuring and cross-regional and/or transnational institutions as well as regulatory and hegemonic structures. China’s ascent cannot be explained without referring to the country’s integration in the most important overarching macro process that took place in the latter part of the twentieth century, that is, liberal globalization.5 A global analytical perspective would therefore refer to the extraordinary importance of specific stakeholders and processes acting or occurring beyond or at least not exclusively within Chinese territory and significantly impacting the dynamics and character of China’s political economy. Neither the liberal success story of the marketization of China’s domestic economy (see Hung 2008) nor more state-centric approaches (see D. Yang 2004) give due credit to the unique circumstances of the East Asian growth region and the process of advanced transnationalization of the global economy.
(5) Further, theories from historical sociology furnish the debate on the concept of “multiple modernities” with important insights, to which CPE and IPE have not given adequate consideration. In order to understand the concept of China’s continuity in change, that is, the combination of path-dependent and path-shaping processes, we must take into account the concept of elements of modernization
