https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/09/30/iippe-2021-imperialism-china-and-finance/
from yesterdays thread, we got this paper floating which argues that there isnt an argument for imperialism. we'll take it from there. also I'd love to see more material supporting this stance!
to me, the author of the linked paper doesnt really answer the question.
the text says middle rank economies arent or cant be subimperialist? unclear how they support this claim.
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they cite a study showing china as in between imperialist and imperialized
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their own UE index shows a massive decrease of outflow in china in the last 20 years compared to earlier. this dosnt conflict with the argument that china might be imperialist, because its the recent shift to capital export that we look at here.
author then they later say “imperialist economies and the rest is not narrowing – on the contrary. And that includes China, which will not join the imperialist club.” - how does make sense with the above then?
the linked ppt seems to compute imperialism in total trade. noone is arguing china is imperialist against the west, but this calculation masks the argument of a potential “subimperialism”, in China’s global south trade, because this is a small share of China’s total trade. so we’re not left with any conclusion about “sub-imperialism” or whatever you will call these countries that have net outflows to the old west, but exploit the global south in their own right. this could include overseas China economy, turkey?, the gulf, malaysia. etc.
This was one of Michael's explanations against the term "sub-imperialist" (which may include Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS), Nigeria, Mexico, Colombia, Philippines, Argentina, Malaysia, Turkey, Vietnam, and Indonesia that Michael Roberts instead refers to as "also rans" and others may refer to as semi-periphery countries):
In our definition, there are no ‘sub-imperialist’ countries, because the notion of sub-imperialism fails to focus on international differences in productivity differentials and misses the lack of persistent technological superiority.
He also references this book by Marxist economist Sam King.
In an earlier article on imperialism Roberts also referenced work done by Marxist economists David Kotz and Zhongjin Li:
More importantly, Horn et al (2019) also find that unlike other major economies, almost all of China’s external lending and portfolio investment is undertaken by the Chinese government, state-owned companies, or the state-controlled central bank, not by private investors that follow the logic behind profit-oriented decisions.
Chinese official lending programs, such as the more recent Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), function as a vehicle for China’s economic statecraft and international cooperation, rather than a search for state domination. Moreover, the investment and loan decisions are mainly channeled through two policy banks, the Chinese Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China (Chexim), which are largely development-oriented and policy-oriented financial agencies still controlled by the state that aim to achieve the policy objectives of the party and state, rather than originating from private capitalists in pursuit of profit.
China’s official overseas investments have been preeminently for long-neglected transportation and communication infrastructure and energy supply projects, and its loans are typically advanced at zero or near-zero interest, often repaid in natural resources (quasi-barter), if they are not canceled entirely (Brautigam, 2009). A large share has gone to countries that are not beneficiaries of recent debt relief initiatives (Foster et al, 2009).
By investing and lending largely to developing countries, especially low-income countries, and promoting industrialization in the global South, China is seen as supporting initiatives to address development problems not solved by neoliberalism’s corporate initiatives. While China’s current approach is more commercial than formerly, it continues to support state-run projects in industry and agriculture, which contrasts with the insistence in Washington Consensus on the conditionalities of structural adjustment programs (Sautman and Yan, 2007).
The evidence suggests that China’s strategic lending programs are aimed at reaching mutually beneficial deals rather than at securing conditions for extracting extra-high profits by Chinese capitalists abroad.
By 2019, China had provided nearly $56.48 billion of development assistance to more than 160 countries and international organizations and dispatched more than 600,000 aid workers (Xinhua News, 2019). China has also provided support for other developing countries in implementing the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through the establishment of the China-UN Peace and Development Fund. China has pledged $200 million over a ten-year period to that agency, to the UN Fund for South-South Cooperation, and to the South-South climate fund ((United Nations, 2020; the South Center, 2016), which demonstrates support for a multilateral approach to development aid.
Chinese capitalists have treated local workers similarly to the treatment by capitalist investors from other countries, while by contrast Chinese SOEs have been more responsive to requests from the host government regarding more job creation and better labor conditions (Oya & Schaefer, 2019).
Other research also has found that Chinese projects create net employment for national workers and crowd in domestic firms as well. (Brautigam, 2009; Shen, 2015; Peters & Armony, 2017)
Private investment is still not a large share of overseas investment. Private capitalists do not appear to be strong enough to press the Chinese state to enforce their interests in other countries. The predominant share of official investment and lending follows the party’s and state’s general policy agendas for economic growth and stability. Our review of the evidence supports the conclusion that China’s engagement beyond the border does not follow the dynamic of capitalist imperialism.
Horn et al (2019) also found that China has always been an active international lender even under Mao Zedong in the 1950s-70s.
good post. the state/private distinction is important. Another source here claimed that chinese profits abroad are only half what abroad profits are in china, which makes this point even more compelling. also thats crazy that they didnt reach the levels of the mao days until the financial crisis.
https://monthlyreview.org/2021/07/01/china-imperialism-or-semi-periphery/
good post!
The real question is not whether China has become imperialistic, but whether China will advance into the core of the capitalist world system in the foreseeable future. Because of the structural barriers of the capitalist world system, it is unlikely that China will become a member of the core
is this claim right, though? I'd think china critics see China as trying create its own polarity and a second capitalist system. It's not like they think China is moving to be a junior partner of capitalism like say Japan is.
foreign capitalists in China are able to make about twice as much profit as Chinese capital can make in the rest of the world on a given amount of investment. [..] China’s net investment income from abroad is negative
interesting.
This leaves about $158 billion (8.7 percent of China’s total stock of direct investment abroad or 2.2 percent of China’s total overseas assets) invested in Africa, Latin America, and the rest of Asia. This part of Chinese investment no doubt exploits the peoples in Asia, Africa, and Latin America of their labor and natural resources. But it is a small fraction of China’s total overseas investment and an almost negligible part of the enormous total wealth that Chinese capitalists have accumulated (China’s domestic capital stock is about five times as large as China’s overseas assets). Some Chinese capitalists may be blamed for their imperialist-like behaviors in developing countries, but, on the whole, Chinese capitalism remains nonimperialist.
then lets revisit the idea of subimperialism. --> "China has established exploitative relations against nearly one-half of the world population. China can no longer be treated simply as a peripheral country in the capitalist world system."
China’s advance into the core would require not only the extraction of hundreds of millions of worker-years from the rest of the world, but also massive amounts of energy resources.
i think this is one of the better ways to go about this. for china to float into the typical imperialist structure we would need like 6 planets at this point.
Therefore, even if China uses up the entire world’s lithium production, it would only be sufficient to replace about one-half of China’s conventional car production
this author kicks ass. from dunking on the china is empire crowd to kicking it to the pro-growth dogmatists.
Maybe we should reorient the conversation entirely. Who and what is imperialist? Well, first order of business, who is imperializing our common carbon budget? Who is doing the most relative to their conditions to tow us under the global warming benchmarks? This is hardly a glowing article, but I like where they go with it. Still, the conversation we're having here is imperialist relations from china downwards the pecking order. Article doesn't help us much here. So I'll absorb the ecological perspective and propose to use the subimperialist category to describe the offshore economy of China, but with the absolutely substantial caveat that there is an anti-imperialist logic to these engagements in the poorest countries, in providing the needed infrastructure and offcompeting the bloodsucking western companies. But this piece isnt the end of this debate.
Taking the opportunity to recirculate scholarship of imperialism from an earlier thread:
on capitalist imperialism in globalization: there's the cheng enfu and lu baolin essay, and I've have noted intan suwandi, the patnaiks, zak cope and john smith. There is also Imperialism and the Development Myth: How Rich Countries Dominate in the Twenty-First Century by Sam King
half of the squad actually met up in this avenger assembly-lookin forum, which is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku92kdTRjEI
from a daily, the good comrade Comi suggested to start with
Divided world divided class? - Samir Amin in that sphere also
to which i replied
I was gonna schematize amin with harvey and wallerstein as a prior generation scholars dealing with a prepubescent globalization but maybe thats too rigid. But we’re kinda doing an unhelpful conflation between world systems theory, dependency theory and value chain analysis here?
I think just from population size china is unlikely to become strictly imperialist. As well as technological backwardness is kinda sketchy argument to me. Yes, china can’t make latest computer chips and chip designer software (as I’ve read) being somewhat dodgy, but what is the rest of backward technology? I think they can make other high tech stuff, maybe 5-10 year backward, but not too bad
I’m more interested if someone has calculated gross rate of profit in marxist sense across all countries tbh, as far as I know not yet.
I’ll watch the panel you linked though :meow-tankie:
My short reasoning is that without knowing average rate of exploitation across countries, it’s meaningless to look at structures of imports/exports of china and trying to glean something from them
Taiwanese companies, which (IIRC) operate factories on the mainland. The know-how and IP, though, is regrettably in Taipei.
My understanding is TSMC is at the top of the industry, currently. China can fab, but not as well. For instance, that article is about the 28 nm to 14 nm nodes, and TSMC is at something like 5 nm. The node sizes don't really mean all that much, but it's a general indication at least.
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's what keeps it all going. No one wants the industry to crash. For instance, if China shut down TSMC, they'd have a shortage of processors they really need for research.
Kind of makes me wonder, with the chip shortage, of China’s desire to dive head-first into a tech driven society and their desire to catch up in chips is going to play a role in the coming Cold War.
100% yes. It's already started with the Huawei thing.
In the short term, China could nationalize the fabs and limit exports, creating an effect like shutting them down for the rest of the world while increasing local supply.
Not that this is a good idea.
The resulting trade war would probably make any past one look like a sneeze, though.
From tsmc and samsung? And soon, maybe, intel in arizona. Simc is on 14 nm, asml can’t sell to china, and designer software is heavily restricted to mainland as well
it’s meaningless to look at structures of imports/exports of china and trying to glean something from them
i agree. for me it comes down to precision in debate with for example critical african marxists.
also the panel i linked doesnt have anything to do with the above argument. i just linked it because it introduces some scholars who are writing in imperialism today, which im trying to compile with these names. panel also includes bellamy foster, the main dude at monthly review. communist nerds version of a superstar
I’m having a hard time figuring out how John Smiths definition of “super-exploitation” is that much different than regular unequal exchange.
Superexploitation requires payment below subsistence rate of reproduction of workers, and introduces (or returns) third mode of exploitation back into marxism. Unequal exchange doesn’t necessarily imply superexploitation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/ltirvl/no_china_is_not_fucking_imperialist_you_twit/
the poster doesnt make their case convincingly but those are some useful links.
