ABSTRACT
Has a Beijing Consensus emerged to challenge the Washington Consensus? If so, what is the essence of this alternative consensus and why does it matter? This article argues that efforts at a definitive description of a Chinese model of state–economy relations, especially as it compares to the original policy recommendations of the Washington Consensus, have and will continue to prove unsatisfying. This is because any such comparative exercise is inherently political and prone to various angles of critique. Instead, this article argues that it is precisely because of the politics of such comparison that competing and often contradictory portrayals of a Beijing Consensus or China Model have taken on importance inside and outside of China. This article further argues that western accounts of a Beijing Consensus or China Model alternative to the Washington Consensus too often ignore or minimize the contentious debates within China about how best to describe Chinese economic governance. This study, in contrast, seeks to understand China's relationship to the Washington Consensus by exploring how concepts like the Beijing Consensus or China Model are deployed and contested outside and inside of China. The article concludes by offering suggestions for further research on the domestic Chinese and international policy implications of debates about the Beijing Consensus.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Mark Blyth and Cornel Ban as well the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Josh Gordon, Mike Glosny, Victor Shih, Doug Fuller, and Jean-Marc Blanchard for their helpful feedback.
Notes
1. For a much earlier argument that China's developmental successes were in important part due to following core Washington Consensus tenants see Nolan (2001).
2. Kennedy does not actually include privatization in his list of the eight policies that correspond with the original tenets of the Washington Consensus, but he does note that ‘a substantial portion of SOEs have been privatized since the late 1990s’ (2010: 470).
3. Yao in particular has become increasingly critical of the idea of the Beijing Consensus. See Yao (2010a).
4. For more on the importance of these ‘basic starting conditions’ for understanding what is possibly unique, or at least of central importance, in China's post-Mao developmental trajectory see Naughton (2010: 438–39).
5. For more on the internal logic of China's political and economic reform in the years immediately after Mao's death see White (1993), Shirk (1993), Dutton (2000) and more recently, Vogel (2011).
6. See Huang (2008) on the timing of rural township and village enterprise (TVE) policy change and Walter and Howe (2011) on the stagnation of financial sector reforms. For more on how China's current pattern of economic development is undergoing a profound shift, see Dickson (2011).
7. For more on the history of regulatory reform in these sectors see Pearson (2005 and 2007) and Hsueh (2011). Naughton makes the point that the areas in which the government maintains ownership and/or promotes national or local champions are often in ‘non-competitive’ or, alternatively, technologically ‘pioneering’ sectors (Naughton, 2010: 442).
8. Barry Naughton argues for a three-tier understanding of the Chinese economy based on ownership types: ‘large, central government firms; hybrid local and foreign firms; and small-scale capitalism’ (Naughton, 2010: 441).
9. Boas and Gans-Morse (2009) present an insightful overview of the evolution of the concept of ‘neoliberalism’, demonstrating that scholars often use the term as little more than an ‘anti-liberal slogan’.
10. While much of what I refer to as the ‘Western’ discussion about the China Model takes place in English language academic and media publications based in the United States and Europe, the amount of interest in, and contributions to, these discussions is burgeoning in many parts of the world. In particular, in developing regions such as Latin America and Africa where China's trade and investment impact has underdone a boom over the last decade, there is keen interest in the idea of a China Model. For more on the China–Latin America connection in particular see Ferchen (2011).
11. See Gloria Davies (2007) for a related distinction between ‘Anglophone’ and ‘Sinophone’ spheres of critical scholarship.
12. See Pei's (2009) ‘Why China Won't Rule the World’ for a pointed refutation of Jacques’ titular premise.
13. Former mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, has spoken highly of Jacques’ book, reportedly even writing to Jacques to express his praise in person. Alternately, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers remarked that When China Rules the World was ‘interesting … and disturbing’ after reading the book on the way to Davos (Harris, 2011).
14. Krugman's 1994 ‘Myth of Asia's Miracle’ article is still a classic statement about the limits of this state-led investment model. Jonathan Anderson's subsequent work on China (2006 and 2009) draws explicitly on Krugman's 1994 piece. For more positive views of the success and even necessity of state-led investment for China's growth see Naughton (2010) and Perkins (unpublished manuscript).
15. For more on how China's stimulus package is leading to massive local government debt build-up that may have severe implications for any bursting of the property market bubble see Shih (2010).
16. For an excellent overview of the evolution of the ‘Developmental State’ in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan see Fields (in press).
17. In the 1980s Prestowitz (1988) also made similar arguments about Japan's industrial strategy and the imperative of the US adoption of a counter-strategy.
18. In this sense debates outside of China about the emergence and impact of a Beijing Consensus reflect similarly opposed visions of China's rise as threatening or peaceful.
19. Alistair Iain Johnston (2011: 9) has questioned the importance of ‘pundit talk’ of a Beijing Consensus, arguing that few in the US government take seriously that China's model of development provides a challenge to US interests. It may or may not be the case that US officials are concerned about a Beijing Consensus, but as this article seeks to underscore, even if much of the global debate about the idea of a Beijing Consensus amounts to ‘mere’ punditry, such debate represents a deeply contested political battle over what form of state–economy relations is appropriate and/or ascendant. As such, maybe US officials should be more attentive to such debates.
20. Even Mark Leonard's What Does China Think? (2008) has little to say about either Beijing Consensus or China Model debates in China. Others, like Kuhn's (2009) similarly titled How China's Leaders Think or Naisbitt's (2010) China's Megatrends, are little more than reiterations of CCP propaganda about China's harmonious and scientific development.
21. Obviously, in the first section on China–Washington Consensus comparisons above, such assumptions were the object of critical analysis (i.e., questions are asked about which policy in which sector during which time). Also, Kennedy (2010) analyzes domestic Chinese discussions about the merits of a ‘China Model’.
22. These twin concepts were enshrined as the official centerpieces of the Hu/Wen leadership team at the Seventeenth Party Congress held in October of 2007. See Hu Jintao's official report from the Party Congress (Hu, 2007).
23. The title of another article underlines this point: ‘The Party center explicitly wants to criticize and restrict neoliberalism’ (Fewsmith, 2005: 8, fn 6).
24. See Lu (2010) for a discussion about official ‘China “hubris” talk’. However, serious questions remain about how much increasingly aggressive Chinese foreign policy behavior since 2008 may be tied to misperceptions about the relative demise of American power and global commitments after the crisis (see Christensen, 2011).
25. Although not necessarily the same as an invitation from the top Party leadership, Jacques did spend part of the fall semester of 2011 as the special guest of the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University.
26. A working definition of public intellectuals comes from Cheek: ‘They have academic backgrounds and professional knowledge; they address and participate in public affairs; they maintain a critical spirit and moral ideals’ (Cheek, 2006: 401). Since the beginning of the reform period in the late 1970s there has been vigorous debate among China's public intellectuals about the proper relationship between the state and the economy. Gloria Davies has remarked that this kind of ‘worrying about China’ is a common theme, in fact a necessary part of being a public intellectual in China in the sense that ‘worrying about China carries the moral obligation of first identifying and then solving perceived Chinese problems’ (Davies, 2007: 7).
27. The terms New Left and liberal are themselves contested. Many grouped under the New Left category prefer to refer to themselves as ‘critical intellectuals’ or not to be given a label at all. Other terms for those in the liberal camp include the ‘new right’ or ‘neoliberals’, again labels that are not necessarily preferred as self-descriptions.
28. For more on the Chinese focus on a China Model rather than a Beijing Consensus see Kennedy (2010).
29. See Naughton (2010) for a critique of this language of ‘flexibility and pragmatism’. But for more on how China has successfully implemented ‘policy experimentation’ to find innovative solutions to developmental challenges see Heilmann (2008).
30. For a comprehensive overview of the various factions or groupings within the New Left see Carter (2010).
31. Many on the New Left claim that the Maoist era was a model of the pursuit of equality in China, but that this goal has been abandoned in the face of neoliberal influence. For an excellent discussion of related debates see Davies (2007).
32. Some New Left scholars, defending themselves from liberal criticisms to the contrary, are eager to emphasize that their particular focus on enhanced central government and Party authority also includes calls for more ‘democratic’ participation. Sometimes referencing European social democracy, and at other emphasizing Chinese communitarian traditions, some on the New Left underline the need for enhanced ‘economic democracy’ to address the concerns of peasants and urban workers. See, for example, Cui (2001, 2003).
33. For three major edited volumes in Chinese on the China Model that have emerged since the financial crisis see Pan (2009), Pan and Ma (2010), and Zhao and Wu (2010).
34. For a full listing of the forum events and transcripts of the presentations see (http://www.huanqiu.com/www/1871/index.html).
35. On March 15, 2012, Bo Xilai was removed from his position as Chonqing provincial Party secretary.
36. As the son of a former high-ranking official, Bo is often categorized as a ‘princeling’, who may eventually be tapped as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Moreover, he is often described as one of China's only truly charismatic leaders. There is also at least one book in Chinese titled Chongqing Model even though Cui is not the author. See Su, Yang and Liu (2011).
37. For more examples of the cake metaphor as applied to the ‘Chongqing Model’ see Cui (2011) and Wang (2011).
38. To underscore the larger stakes of the proliferation of international or domestic models of state–economy relations, as well as to undercut any idea of seamless unity within the CCP, the latter half of 2011 also witnessed much discussion within China about an alternative to the Chongqing Model: a Guangdong Model. The Guangdong Model, named for the province next to Hong Kong, was more in tune with liberal ideas in its emphasis on giving greater play to market forces and limiting government interference in the economy. See ‘The Guangdong Model’ (2011).
39. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiabo in 2010 ushered in much discussion within China and beyond about the appropriateness of China's adoption of ‘universal values’. For a carefully argued defense of the applicability of universal values in contemporary China see Xu (2010).
40. Beijing and Zhejiang University economist Wang Dingding is one of the most prominent supporters of what he calls ‘sophisticated classical liberalism’. In this vein Wang has long espoused the applicability of the writings of F. A. Hayek to a range of contemporary Chinese economic and political issues.
41. See Cheek (2006) and Fung (2008/2009) for more on the historical roots of Chinese liberalism. Nevertheless, while liberalism may have deep historical roots in modern China, that does not mean that such ideas have been ascendant. In fact, as the Party-sponsored critique of neoliberalism highlights, many liberal ideas are clearly deeply threatening to the Party's efforts at self-preservation.
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