Chapter 1. Bureaucrats, Businesses, and Economic Policies in a Globalized China

Abstract

This chapter introduces background on emergence of national campaigns to cultivate domestic competitiveness in contrast to China’s previous role as the “world’s workshop.” It reveals the divergent ways in which localities responded to and carried out policies. The chapter accounts for such variation by breaking down the assumption of a coherent and single-level state that is inherent in the state-centric approach, while at the same time disaggregating the influence of foreign capital assumed by the FDI-driven perspective. By examining the interaction of foreign capital and local states, the chapter discusses how globalization influences the rise of investment-seeking states, the bureaucratic coalitions in city policy making, the effectiveness of policies for local firms, and the varieties of local capitalism. It also discusses the logic of the research design, the major sites of field work, and the sources of qualitative and quantitative data that the book draws on.