What consensus? Geopolitics and policy paradigms in China and the United States

Abstract

The Washington Consensus is not what it was. A model of development associated with the Untied States, it has been diminished both by apparent failures, widespread criticism and by the recent economic crisis that had its origins in the US. Anglo‐American capitalism has lost a good deal of its influence and attractiveness. As a consequence, alternative models of development have become more prominent, especially the so‐called Beijing Consensus. The authors argue that at one level this evolving policy discourse and debate reflects a long‐term structural change in the relative positions of China and the United States. However, it is far from clear that this transformation has gone far enough to underpin a significant ideational or policy challenge on China's part. On the contrary, the debate in China demonstrates that there is little appetite for, or expectation of, a major paradigm change in the near future.

Tailoring for Development: China's Post‐crisis Influence in Global Financial Governance

“…The final narrative holds that China's rise has precipitated systemic changes in the nature of the global financial order that China is ushering in a qualitatively different vision for how to organize and govern global capitalism (Bremmer, 2010;Xu, 2017), reshaping the dynamics of transnational financial integration and governance. This has spurred debates on the nature of the 'China model' as a mode of development (Beeson and Li, 2015;Breslin, 2011;Horesh and Lim, 2017;Kennedy, 2010), and of China's preferences for regionally oriented institutional architectures of GFG (Sohn, 2013; see also Helleiner and Pagliari, 2011). Recent moves have advanced beyond generalizations as to China's preferences towards GFG, for example by arguing that rather than a 'China model', China's core national objective of economic development drives inconsistent stances across different issue areas, some of which support the status quo, and others which seek to revise it (G€ uven, 2017;Zhang, 2017).…”

Sovereignty regimes in the South China Sea: assessing contemporary Sino-US relations

“…Pan 2010), as well as in the maritime disputes, the latter is at the center of the conundrum over how to manage current economic volatility: whether through liberalizing the economy and sacrificing party control, or reinforcing state control and probably restricting China's role in international institutions and foreign economic development (e.g. Beeson and Li 2015). The politics of the regime will determine the outcome of these tensions, not some a priori set of determinants that can be identified to predict the future.…”

China's Place in Regional and Global Governance: A New World Comes Into View

“…At this stage China's leaders appear ambivalent about their ability to articulate, much less promote, a coherent ideology of a sort that distinguished the ‘Washington consensus’, and which formed the discursive core of American dominance (Beeson and Li, ; Shambaugh, ). And yet it is also clear that there is a rapidly growing belief within the Chinese leadership, epitomized by the actions of President Xi (), that China could and should develop a distinctive form of governance that reflects and advances its interests.…”

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