Structural Power, Hegemony, and State Capitalism: Limits to China’s Global Economic Power

Abstract

A comparative historical perspective shows how globalization and the specificities of China’s rapid growth era limit its hegemonic potential in the twenty-first century global economy. Although state capitalism and openness to foreign capital facilitated China’s economic transformation, interactions among three forms of capital—state, private, and foreign—have produced developmental dynamics that constrain China’s capacity to assume the position of the world’s economic hegemon. These include (1) the compromised competitiveness of China’s corporate sector due to the domination of state-owned enterprises, (2) limits on the ability of Chinese firms to develop leading transnational corporations, and (3) early openness to and continued dependence on foreign capital. Moreover, the party-state’s efforts to ameliorate these constraints arouse external suspicion rather than support a Chinese-led hegemonic order based on consent and shared interests. These historically conditioned realities should temper expectations that China is converging teleologically toward a familiar hegemonic role in the international economy.