Chen, Ling. Manipulating Globalization: The Influence of Bureaucrats on Business in China

Excerpt

Since the 1990s, China has increasingly integrated into a globalized economy by attracting a large amount of foreign direct investment (FDI). But from the mid-2000s, the government began to vigorously support the development of indigenous innovation such that some Chinese firms, such as Huawei and ZTE, have emerged as global technology leaders. However, even within the same industry and among localities at similar levels of development and FDI dependence in China, domestic upgrading has not been equally successful. In Manipulating Globalization, Ling Chen argues that such variation in the implementation of upgrading policies and policy effectiveness is attributed to the coalitions formed at the local level between Chinese bureaucrats and foreign businesses. She finds that cities that initially focused on attracting large-scale, high-end multinational companies (MNCs) are less able to effectively implement policies for upgrading domestic firms than those that started with smaller foreign investors at a lower position of the value chain. By unpacking the interests and strategies of city-level bureaucrats, the book provides novel insights into China’s local political economy in the context of contemporary globalization. …