Book Project

From Bureaucrats to Financiers: How China’s State Ownership Regimes is Transforming Capital Markets

In light of China’s failing economy due to exorbitant debt accumulated from decades of land-financing, my dissertation pursues a timely question, how is China simultaneously shifting its economic model and the system of financing that powers it? Drawing on six months of field work and an original dataset on the universe of State Capital Investment and Operation firms (SCIOs) at both the central and local-level, I find that China’s state corporate sector is emerging as a formidable force within China’s capital markets. At the central-level, these SCIOs mobilize their extensive shareholding structures to effectively target government preferential projects and strategic firms. In subsequent local-level chapters, I develop my conceptual framework of “ownership regimes“ to highlight the political dynamics between new and old financial actors. I investigate the conditions under which compromise or competition occurs, and the developmental consequences of these interactions.

Chongqing's central business district (Chongqing 2019)