Shaping The Agenda Jointly? China and the Eu in the G20

Since the eruption of the global financial crisis in 2008, the Anglo-American model of financial regulation has been widely discredited. Indeed, while this crisis is still referred to as a “globa” crisis, it was in effect a specific form of capitalism associated with the “West” that was really in crisis.1 The crisis exposed the severe shortcomings of a global financial architecture “known variously as neoliberalism, the Washington Consensus or the globalization consensus,” centered on the notion that all governments should liberalize, privatize, and deregulate their economies to generate growth.2 Even the architect of “the Washington Consensus,” John Williamson, acknowledged that the crisis had done much to undermine confidence and faith in the (neo)liberal approach, and instead fortified proponents of strong state forms of capitalism such as the “Beijing Consensus.”3