Introduction: Financialisation and Development in Asia under Late Capitalism

Abstract

Multilateral development agencies have increasingly focused attention on underdeveloped countries in Asia as potential new sites for financial capital. Often referred to as "emerging markets", these economies are seen as ripe for private sector investment and, at the same time, in need of foreign capital to support rapid industrialisation, modernisation and poverty reduction. For development agencies, this confluence of interests suggests a means for quickly closing the "development gap", primarily through mobilising techno-managerial modalities designed to reduce barriers to capital entry and other institutional inefficiencies seen as inimical to investment. Thus development agencies now encourage the construction of "enabling environments" to support "market driven development" through processes of "financialisation". Development, in this sense, is no longer state-led or state-centred, but rather financially driven and privately procured.As we highlight in this special issue, however, financialised modes of development are highly contested and problematic. Indeed, the diffusion into the underdeveloped world of essentially developed world financialisation agendas that seek to instil a broad-based market rationalism that downloads new costs and risks to populations is of significant concern. This Introduction sets in context and introduces a much needed set of articles that bring clarity to financialisation in developing Asia and its implications for development as a process of substantively improving material conditions.

Deconstructing the Financialization of Healthcare

“…The investments in healthcare companies made by development finance institutions can be understood as part of their extended role to ‘escort’ private finance into development (Carroll and Jarvis, ). While promoting private capital flows as part of development aid activities is not new, it has become much more central in the era of the SDGs (Van Waeyenberge, ).…”

Financialization with Chinese characteristics? Exchanges, control & capital markets in authoritarian capitalism

“…Contributing to the growing literatures on variegated financialization and the state, this paper argues that states are not only important actors facilitating financialization but can also exercise a considerable degree of control over financialization, thereby shaping its very form. Instead of a financialization process that follows a neoliberal logic and constrains state power (Carroll and Jarvis, 2014), what we see in China is a 'financialization with Chinese characteristics' where the state actively tries to manage financialization and its social outcomes.…”

“…The active management of capital markets through Chinese exchanges addresses different parts of China's socio-economic system and aim to: prevent the building up of excessive financial risks (financial sector); stabilize the socio-political system by simultaneously encouraging and protecting retail investor participation (society); assess the usefulness of financial activities and their contribution to the real economy (national development); and assist in the reform of Chinese corporations (non-financial sector); while maintaining control despite an increased opening to international investors. Rather than enforcing relative conformity with a neoliberal hegemonic project (Carroll and Jarvis, 2014), within the variegated financialization of China's political economy exchanges sustain and facilitate the development of Chinese authoritarian capitalism.…”

Financiarización e inversiones de los fondos de pensiones en la Alianza del Pacífico

“…La mayoría de los estudios sobre financiarización se han centrado en el análisis de economías desarrolladas con mercados financieros robustos, amplia distribución de los derechos de propiedad y que aplican mecanismos de mercado como principal vía para la distribución del capital, en donde destacan principalmente los casos de Estados Unidos y Reino Unido (Siepel & Nightingale, 2014). No obstante, en los últimos años se ha observado un mayor interés académico por extender los estudios sobre financiarización al análisis de economías emergentes (Carroll & Jarvis, 2014;Nölke, 2018), en virtud de las transformaciones que han experimentado las estructuras institucionales de estos países y que han favorecido la operación del capital financiero.…”