The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy

Li Minqi

Description

China's increasing power in the global economy is destabilizing the established system. This book analyses the possible historical trajectories of China and the capitalist world-economy in the twenty-first century.



Minqi Li examines the future global prospects from the perspectives of Marxism, world-system theories, and ecological limits to growth. He argues that China is likely to exacerbate many of the major contradictions of world capitalism, which could lead to the demise of the existing world-system.



This is an essential text for students of political economy, economics and global politics.
List Of Tables

List Of Figures

Preface: My 1989

1. An Introduction to China and the Capitalist World-Economy 2. Accumulation, Basic Needs, And Class Struggle: The Rise Of Modern China

3. China And The Neoliberal Global Economy

4. Can the Capitalist World-Economy Survive the Rise of China? 5. Profit And Accumulation: Systemic Cycles And Secular Trends

6. The End Of The Endless Accumulation

7. Between The Realm Of Necessity And The Realm Of Freedom: Historical Possibilities for The Twenty-First Century Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Economic Policy
• Public Policy
• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Communism
• Political economy
• Communisme
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849643948
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist WorldEconomy

MINQI LI

PLUTO PRESS www.plutobooks.com

First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Minqi Li 2008

The right of Minqi Li to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 2773 0 978 0 7453 2772 3

Hardback Paperback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70% post consumer waste.

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

List of Tablesvi List of Figuresvii Preface: My 1989ix

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1. An Introduction to China and the Capitalist World-Economy 1 2. Accumulation, Basic Needs, and Class Struggle: The Rise of Modern China 3. China and the Neoliberal Global Economy 4. Can the Capitalist World-Economy Survive the Rise of China? 5. Pro t and Accumulation: Systemic Cycles and Secular Trends 6. The End of the Endless Accumulation 7. Between the Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom: Historical Possibilities for the Twenty-First Century

Bibliography193 Index202

24 67

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113 139

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List of Tables

2.1 Economic growth rates of China and selected regions of the world, 195076 2.2 Life expectancy at birth in China and selected countries, 19602000 34 2.3 Adult illiteracy rate in China and selected countries, 19702000 35 2.4 Primary school enrollment in China and selected countries, 19702000 2.5 Secondary school enrollment in China and selected countries, 19702000 3.1 Distribution of value added in the global commodity chain of a talking globe model for childrens education 3.2 Share of the worlds total current account surpluses or decits 19952006 4.1 The structure of social classes and occupations in the US 4.2 The structure of social classes and occupations in Latin American countries (1990/1992) 4.3 The evolution of the structure of Chinas social strata, 197899 105 4.4 Class structures in the core and the semi-periphery 4.5 Manufacturing workers wage rates in selected countries 5.1 Ecological footprint of the worlds major regions, 2003 6.1 Estimates of electricity generation cost from alternative energy sources 6.2 Energycostschedule 6.3 Worlds metallic mineral resources

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79 101

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107 108 131

155 156 164

List of Figures

2.1 Share of world GDP, 18202000 2.2 Index of per capita GDP, 18202000 2.3 Chinas crude death rate, 193680 2.4 Chinas natural disasters, 195080 3.1 World economic growth, 19512006 3.2 Corporatpero tability, US 19502006/ China 19802005 3.3 Property income as share of GDP, Europe and Japan 19602006 76 3.4 Contribution to world economic growth (PPP), 1976/782006 77 3.5 Contribution to world economic growth (current US$), 1966/752006 78 3.6 US foreign debt and the worlds foreign exchange reserves, 19802006 3.7 Real oil price and world economic growth, 19502006 3.8 Long-term variations of US stock prices, 18712006 3.9 Macroeconomic structure of the US economy, 19602006 84 3.10 US real wage and real median family income indices, 19642006/19772005 85 3.11 US nancial balances: Private, government, and foreign sectors, 19602006 3.12 Macroeconomic structure of the Chinese economy, 19802006 88 3.13 China: Labor income and household consumption, 19802005 89 4.1 Index of per capita GDP, 19752006 4.2 World energy consumption (historical and hypothetical projection), 19702035 5.1 Long-term movement of nominal interest rates: UK 17562006/US 18572006 5.2 Long-term movement of the prot rate, UK 18552006 5.3 Long-term movement of the prot rate, US 18902006 5.4 Economic growth and real interest rates, US 19602006

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viii The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist WorldEconomy

5.5 Share of world GDP, 19752006 5.6 Long-term movement of the output:capital ratio, UK 18552006/US 18502006 5.7 Long-term movement of the prot share, UK 18552006/US 18902006 6.1 World primary energy consumption: historical and projected, 19652050 6.2 Energeyf ciency, 19752004 6.3 World economic growth: historical and projected, 19652050 163 6.4 Worlds grain production, 19502006 (actual)/ 19842100 (trend) 6.5 Chinas grain production, 19502006 (actual)/ 19962100 (trend) 6.6 World primary energy consumption, carbon dioxide equivalent stabilizing at 450 ppm 6.7 World economic growth, carbon dioxide equivalent stabilizing at 450 ppm

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Preface: My 1989

This book is unlike many of the books on China today. It is not one that will discuss how Chinas dramatic economic growth and growing geopolitical inuence will constitute an economic, military, and cultural threat to the West. Nor is it one that will discuss how China will rise to become the worlds next hegemony, what strategy China should adopt for this purpose, or what economic and political model China should follow to be a responsible player in world politics. However, this bookwilldiscuss the underlying world- historical processes, which have led to the current world-historical context upon which both the perception of China as a threat to the west and the perception of China as a benign rising world power have attempted to reect. It is this authors view that the existing world-system, capitalism, will come to an end in the not-too-distant future (possibly within many readers lifetime) and will be replaced by some other system or systems. This book is more about the demise of the capitalist world-economy than about the rise of China. It discusses the rise of China to the extent that it arises from the same historical processes that have contributed to the demise of the existing world-system. The rise of China is an integral part of these historical processes, and represents a great acceleration of these processes. Capitalism (or the capitalist world-economy) is a social system based on the production for prot and the endless accumulation of capital. The operation and the expansion of the existing world- system thus depend on a set of historical conditions that help to secure low environmental cost, low wage cost, and low taxation cost. However, the operations of capitalism follow certain dynamics or laws of motion that in the long run tend to raise all of these costs. As these costs rise beyond a certain point, the capitalist system is no longer protable and the ceaseless accumulation of capital will have to come to an end. Historically, geographic expansions have been a major mechanism through which the system brought in new areas of low costs that helped tochecktheseculartendencyofrisingpressureonprotability.China was one of the last large geographical areas that was incorporated

x The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist WorldEconomy

into the capitalist world-economy and did not actively participate in the system-wide division of labor until very recently. China therefore has functioned as a strategic reserve for the capitalist world-economy, and the mobilization of this large strategic reserve in fact signals the impending terminal crisis of the existing world-system. How did I arrive at my current intellectual position? I belong to the 1989 generation. But unlike the rest of the 1989 generation, I made the unusual intellectual and political trajectory from the Right to the Left, and from being a neoliberal democrat to a revolutionary Marxist. I was a student at the Economic Management Department of Beijing University during the period 198790. This department has now become the Guanghua Economic Management School, a leading Chinese neoliberal think tank advocating full-scale market liberalization and privatization. At Beijing University, we were taught standard neoclassical microeconomics and macroeconomics, and what later I learned was termed Chicago School economicsthat is, the theory that only a free market economy with claried private property rights and small government can solve all economic and social problems rationally and efciently. We were convinced that the socialist economy was unjust, oppressive, and inefcient. It rewarded a layer of privileged, lazy workers in the state sector and punished (or at least undercom- pensated) capable and smart people such as entrepreneurs and intellectuals, who we considered to be the cream of society. Thus, for China to have any chance to catch up with the West, to be rich and powerful, it had to follow the free market capitalist model. State-owned enterprises were by nature inefcient and should all be privatized. State-sector workers should be forced to participate in market competition and those who were incapable, too lazy, or too stupid, should just be abandoned. The 1980s was a decade of political and intellectual excitement in China. Despite some half-hearted official restrictions, large sections of the Chinese intelligentsia were politically active and were able to push for successive waves of the so-called emancipation of ideas (jiefang sixiang). The intellectual critique of the already existing Chinese socialism at rst took place largely within a Marxist discourse. Dissident intellectuals called for more democracy without questioning the legitimacy of the Chinese Revolution or the economic institutions of socialism. After 1985, however, economic reform moved increasingly in the direction of the free market. Corruption increased and many among

Preface: My 1989 xi

the bureaucratic elites became the earliest big capitalists. Meanwhile, among the intellectuals, there was a sharp turn to the right. The earlier, Maoist phase of Chinese socialism was increasingly seen as a period of political oppression and economic failure. Chinese socialism was supposed to have failed, as it lost the economic growth race to places such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Many regarded Mao Zedong himself as an ignorant, backward Chinese peasant who turned into a cruel, power-hungry despot who had been responsible for the killing of tens of millions. (This perception of Mao is by no means a new one, we knew it back in the 1980s.) The politically active intellectuals no longer borrowed discourse from Marxism. Instead, western classical liberalism and neoliberal economics, as represented by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, had become the new, fashionable ideology. Liberal intellectuals were all in favor of privatization and the free market. But they disagreed among themselves regarding the political strategy of reform (that is, the transition to capitalism). Some continued to favor a call for democracy. Others had moved further to the Right by advocating neo-authoritarianism, the kind of authoritarian capitalism that existed in South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, which denied the working class democratic rights but provided protection of the property right (or liberty). Many saw Zhao Ziyang, then the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, as the one who could carry out such an enlightened despotism. Such were the ideological conditions in China before the emergence of the 1989 democratic movement. In 1988, I was already active in the campus student dissident activities, and in early 1989, restiveness grew on university campuses. The death of Hu Yaobang (the former reformist general secretary of the Party) was taken as an excuse by the students to initiate a series of political demonstrations. At that time, there was a degree of genuine desire on the part of ordinary students for some form of democracy; there were still many students attending Beijings top universities who came from workers and peasants backgrounds. Thus, there was pressure from below to push the movement in a more radical direction. The liberal intellectuals were in favor of the capitalist-oriented reform. To accomplish this, they were generally inclined to rely upon an alliance with the reformist wing of the Party which was led by Zhao Ziyang. But the liberals also hoped to win over the support of Deng Xiaoping, thede factoleader of the Party. The liberals initially