The Beijing Confusion: China's Quest for a New Socio-Economic Paradigm

October 23, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Mānoa Campus, East-West Center Research Program, Burns Hall, Room 3012

The Beijing Confusion: China's Quest for a New Socio-Economic Paradigm


Giuseppe Gabusi

Department of Cultures, Politics and Society
University of Turin, Italy

Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:00 noon to 1:00pm
John A. Burns Hall, Room 3012 (3rd floor)

The debate on the ‘Beijing consensus’ as an alternative development path to the Western liberal economic model has been going on for more than a decade. After the financial crisis has deepened the fault lines of China’s economy, the attractiveness, the internal logic and the very existence of the so-called ‘China model’ have been put into question. The current leadership is clearly trying and respond to the need to maintain a sustainable path of growth while addressing China’s inequalities, the increasing political power of State-Owned Enterprises, and over-reliance on exports and investment. The seminar will recall the different streams in the ‘China model’ literature, and will highlight the structural political economy challenge the country is facing by looking at the patron-client framework evolution in the latest years. In fact, in the first Leninist state which has managed to distribute large resources, market incentives and institutions have combined for more than three decades to lift the country up to its current upper middle-income status. However, - as these two forces now tend to work in opposite directions – it is far from clear if China can avoid the middle-income trap without reconfiguring the overall political economy framework – which, in its very essence, would require a new political vision.

Giuseppe Gabusi teaches International Political Economy and Political Economy of East Asia at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin. He is one among the co-founders of T.wai, the Torino World Affairs Institute. Dr. Gabusi has been visiting professor at the Zhejiang University and visiting scholar at the Australian National University. His research interests include China’s political economy, political economy of development, East Asian regionalism and foreign trade policies, and he is currently heading a joint T.wai-ANU research project entitled ‘Myanmar’s renaissance? Political change in regional perspective’. Among his works: ‘Evolution After Revolution: The Chinese ‘Claiming State’ Between History and Textbook Economics’, in L. Wang (ed.) (2012), Rising China in the Changing World Economy, Routledge. He has contributed to the European academic and policy debate on China by regularly intervening at ECRAN (Europe-China Research and Advice Network) conferences.


Event Sponsor
East-West Center Research Program, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Penny Higa, (808) 944-7131, HigaP@eastwestcenter.org

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