ExecutIve Summary

This study seeks to answer the question: Is China an imperial power in the image of the West in its relationship with the global South? The answer it arrives at is that from the available evidence, the people’s republic of China is not. So far, that is. The study’s central argument is that the emergence of China as a capitalist power was marked by comparatively little violence and force in the process of primitive capital accumulation, and neither has its global economic expansion over the last 25 years. This is in great contrast to the evolution of relations between the traditional western capitalist powers and the south.

China is seeking what it considers its rightful place in the world, but this is not the same as striving for global hegemony. The Belt and Road Initiative does not appear to be a grand strategy for hegemony and is more likely an effort to solve China’s industrial overcapacity crisis. Under different circumstances, however, this may change.

Currently, Beijing’s military posture is not offensively oriented but is one of strategic defense, with the government’s energies focused on the strategic dilemma of how to nullify the massive US forces right at its doorstep in the South China Sea.

However, over the last 15 years, there have been increasing accusations of Chinese state enterprises and private companies being involved in unfair labor practices, environmentally damaging projects, land-grabbing, locking borrowing countries into debt, and indirectly providing support for dictatorships. Many of these accusations parallel similar criticisms of the behavior of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), private capitalists, and local authorities within China itself. China has also drawn criticism for its unilateral moves in seizing disputed maritime formations and violating the territorial and economic rights of its neighbors in the South China Sea.

Many of these criticisms are valid, and unless China addresses them in a positive fashion soon, these questionable behaviors and practices could congeal into structures of domination similar to those that have marked the relationship of the West with the global South. Perhaps, equally worrisome is that China’s expansion has its own complex of worrisome characteristics that are not reducible solely to reproducing western patterns but can also lead, if unchecked, to hegemonic behavior. Foremost among these is a technocratic top-down approach to development with a cross-ideological appeal that is resistant to democratic control and insensitive to environmental considerations that is fully on display in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

International civil society has an important role to play in bringing about a more healthy relationship between China and the global south. Civil society actors can best help China by criticizing the Chinese government and corporate actors whenever they reproduce the practices of western actors and offering strategies for good behavior that are not simply failed proposals for “corporate social responsibility.” Also important would be a debate and dialogue with Chinese agencies and corporations on their anachronistic 20th century technocratic approach to development that threatens a massive ecological impact as Beijing pursues the BRI.

Published by Focus in the Global South

https://focusweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A4_ChinaAnImperialPower_WEB.pdf