Conceptualising private fintech platforms as financial statecraft and recentralisation in China

ABSTRACT This study analyses the role of China’s private fintech business in Singapore’s emerging digital banking and payment sector by proposing a research framework that synthesises platform political economy, financial statecraft, and recentralisation. This research addresses the research puzzle of why the private fintech platforms have been granted an essential position in China’s plan to roll out the e-CNY as the party-state has intensified its regulatory and legal control over the private fintech sector. Drawing from the analysed documentary and interview data, this research demonstrates that Alibaba, Ant Group, and Tencent can be seen as a form of CCP financial statecraft to help achieve its foreign policy goals because they are established ‘fintech platforms’.