The Global Rise of Chinese Business

Catalog description

In the short span of a few decades, China's distinctive development path has propelled it from an impoverished country to an economic powerhouse of global capitalism. This course has two primary goals: first, it examines China's unique development model, characterized by a rapid market transition from socialism and sustaining decades of rapid economic growth with heavy state-intervention; second, it explores how China's economic ascent globally is reshaping our understandings of business, economic development, and the broader global political-economic order. In exploring China's global rise, we also reflect on classic theories of economic development, reconsidering the extent to which the Chinese case reaffirms or challenges these theories. Key questions guiding our inquiry include: What types of policies and institutional arrangements facilitate economic development? What role does the state play in nurturing and regulating market economies? Does democracy foster the emergence of a business class, and conversely, does a thriving business class support democratic governance? How has the Chinese state shaped the growth of strategic industries (such as AI, green industry) in the contemporary economy? What characterizes the on-the-ground experiences of Chinese enterprises' expansion globally, particularly within developing countries? Finally, in what ways does the global expansion of Chinese businesses differ systematically from that of their Western counterparts?