Pregledni rad

China's economic and financial transformation, the impact of the global financial crisis and the repercussions of China's crisis management

Kristijan Kotarski orcid.org/0000-0001-9500-6760 ; Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska

Sažetak

China’s economic and financial transformation represents the key global trend in the past three decades. The process of opening up created a myriad of internal and external challenges when it comes to China’s governance structure, which is heavily based on governance from the political centre in Beijing, especially given the recent evolution of the Chinese financial system. Those challenges are additionally compounded by the outburst of the global financial crisis in 2008. At that moment the Party was overwhelmed by the need for a system reproduction which was perceived to be unimaginable in the absence of double-digit growth rates. China’s economy has been undergoing financialization ever since that critical juncture. Financialization sucks the productive energy out of the economic system and leaves an ever-shrinking scope for building up an economic capacity, which is indispensable bearing in mind the rising indebtedness based on credit money creation, as stipulated by endogenous monetary theory. This paper is divided into six chapters, and a final paragraph dedicated to concluding remarks. The first and second chapters analyse the basic logic of China’s economic and financial reforms until the outburst of the global financial crisis in 2008. The third chapter gives an overview of the underlying interest constellation and key actors’ preferences vis-à-vis China’s financial architecture. Thereafter, the fourth chapter deals withthe key components of China’s crisis management in the midst of the global financial crisis. The fifth chapter is logically connected to the previous one, as it, having in mind the already given explanation for the financialization of China’s economy in the third and fourth chapters, elucidates the fundamental challenges in financial and economic reform implementation. Namely, those reforms ought to be geared toward creating a more sustainable, stable and inclusive economic and political structure. The sixth chapter aims at using Hyman Minsky’s concepts such as ‘financial instability hypothesis’ and ‘corporate finance typology’ (hedging finance, speculative finance and Ponzi finance) in the analysis of the current state of China’s financial system and the ensuing risks for the outbreak of a devastating financial crisis. In the final chapter, the author lays out two scenarios which will play a role in stymying the unsustainable path of financialization in China, namely the scenarios of hard and soft landing. Irrespective of the Party’s preferred choice, China’s growth rates will significantly plunge. This implies a difficult task of finding new sources of Party’s legitimacy. Furthermore, the choice between these two scenarios carries a high stake for the rest of the world in the light of rising global financial and trade interconnectedness.

Ključne riječi

Hrčak ID:

143309

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/143309

Datum izdavanja:

3.9.2014.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski

Posjeta: 2.324 *