China's capitalism and the crisis

Abstract

Major wars and economic crises force the pace of change within and between capitalist states, giving rise to new alignments and shifts in the geopolitics of world capitalism. At the time of writing this article, turmoil in financial markets triggered by faltering growth in significant parts of the globe was provoking fears that the world economy was plunging into another recession. In the US the recovery has stalled and in the eurozone round two of the sovereign debt crisis is playing out. The exception to this dismal and fragile picture is China, which after a brief dip in 2008-9, has returned to double-digit growth rates. Other countries, such as Brazil and Australia, as well as South East Asia more generally, are being pulled along in its wake by feeding its insatiable demand for raw materials. Coupled with spectacular growth rates since the late 1970s, China’s “soft landing” and apparent rapid recovery from the crisis appear to support claims made by some on the right and the left that the 2008 recession has been a catalyst for the core of capitalism shifting to the East and setting in motion a change in global geopolitics