China's Emerging Global Businesses Political Economy and Institutional Investigations

by Zhang, Yongjin

• ISBN13: 9780333999349
• ISBN10: 0333999347
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

China is well-known as the largest recipient of foreign direct investment among developing countries. Little is known so far of the fact that China has become (quietly) one of the most significant third world investors in the global economy. This book traces the evolutionary path of China's outward investment activities and examines the political economy of the rapid rise of China's global businesses in the context of the economic reforms since 1978. The analysis of changing policy regimes for China's outward investment is complemented by detailed investigations of the rise and operation of three pioneering Chinese multinationals to illustrate this new thrust of China's engagement with the global economy. China's global reach examined in this study explores issues concerning China's creative responses to globalisation and the processes through which China his becoming a globalised state. The first ever book-length study of China's global investment activities, this book fills a significant gap in the literature on China's economic transformation and the rise of multinational corporations from developing countries

Author Biography

Yongjin Zhang is Associate Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

List of Tables, Figures and Boxes	viii
Acknowledgements	x
List of Abbreviations	xii
Part I Revisiting the Economic Internationalisation of China
1 Economic Reform and the Internationalisation of the State	13	(12)
Internationalisation: contested definitions	13	(3)
Economic reform and internationalisation	16	(5)
Internalisation and the internationalisation of the state	21	(2)
Summary	23	(2)
2 The Internationalisation of the Chinese Economy: Empirical Evidence	25	(22)
Growth of foreign trade	26	(1)
Foreign direct investment	27	(3)
Loans from foreign governments and international organisations	30	(2)
Commercial borrowings	32	(3)
Other portfolio inflows	35	(1)
Capital outflows	36	(3)
International engineering and labour service trade	39	(1)
Summary	40	(7)
Part II The Political Economy of China's Emerging Global Businesses
3 Towards the Transnationalisation of Chinese Firms: Policies and Debates	47	(34)
Understanding multinationals in the world economy	49	(4)
Initiating general and particularistic policies, 1979 to 1988	53	(9)
National economic development strategy and transnational operations: earlier debates	62	(4)
Policy debates, 1989-92 and beyond	66	(6)
Institutionalisation of policy regimes and globalisation	72	(8)
Summary	80	(1)
4 China's Multinational Corporations: Then and Now	81	(44)
Transnational operations before 1978	82	(6)
A new and modest start, 1978 to 1987	88	(7)
Adjustments and growth, 1988 to 2000	95	(7)
Outward investment from China since 1978: an overview	102	(9)
China's multinational corporations today: a profile	111	(5)
Summary	116	(9)
Part III The Transnationalisation of Chinese Firms: Institutional Investigations
5 CITIC: A Pioneer Chinese Multinational	125	(34)
CITIC today	127	(2)
Rong Yiren and the establishment of CITIC	129	(5)
Early transnational operations, 1979 to 1986	134	(6)
Restructuring and expansion, 1987 and after	140	(8)
Towards a financial investment holdings conglomerate	148	(1)
CITIC Pacific	149	(2)
CITIC Australia	151	(5)
Summary	156	(3)
6 Sinochem: Global Reach	159	(31)
Sinochem at its prime	161	(4)
Trading with a difference, 1979 to 1987	165	(8)
Experimenting with transnational operations, 1988 to 1990	173	(5)
Global reach	178	(2)
Towards a multinational trading conglomerate?	180	(3)
Sinochem's mid-life crisis	183	(4)
Summary	187	(3)
7 Shougang: Going Transnational	190	(30)
Shougang and economic reforms in China	192	(5)
First international businesses	197	(4)
From technology-seeking to technology-exporting	201	(3)
Deng Xiaoping and Shougang, 1992	204	(4)
From Hong Kong to Peru	208	(7)
Whither Shougang as a multinational corporation post-1995?	215	(3)
Summary	218	(2)
8 Conclusion	220	(11)
Notes	231	(25)
Bibliography	256	(19)
Index	275