China's great transformation: Neoliberalization as establishing a market society.
Abstract
David Harvey in 鈥楢 Brief History of Neoliberalism鈥�, includes China as a country embarking on the course of neoliberalism, but points out that the historic moments of neoliberalization initiated by Deng Xiaoping, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are purely coincidental. He identifies China as a 鈥榮trange case鈥�, describing it elsewhere as an outcome of a particular kind of neoliberalism interdigitated with authoritarian centralized control. 皇冠体育app presence of 鈥榓uthoritarian centralized control鈥� seems to mean that China has deviated from the neoliberalism model and Ong rightly detects a tension between Chinese reality and neoliberal ideology, arguing that 鈥楬arvey has trouble fitting China into his 鈥渘eoliberal template\"鈥� and 鈥楥hina is deviant because neoliberal policies are combined with state authoritarianism鈥�. This article aims to dispel some of the mysterious cloud surrounding the 鈥渟trange Chinese case鈥� by showing that neoliberalization does capture some basic features of market re-orientation in China and that authoritarian control is not a legacy of previous institutional forms, but rather a reaction to marketization. 皇冠体育app Chinese case may in fact show that under some specific conditions neoliberalization may have to consolidate rather than reduce control, and that neoliberalization is the trajectory to establishing a market society, a direction of greater market re-orientation in the world, notwithstanding the fact that different routes are followed in different countries.
Citation
Fulong Wu. China鈥檚 great transformation: Neoliberalization as establishing a market society. Geoforum (2008) 39 (3) 1093-1096. [DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.01.007]