Pivot Agency in China’s Developmental State and Operationalization of the BRI

• In Event: Politics of Industrialization and Economic Development

Abstract

This paper serves two purposes. The first is to provide a “thick description” of the “pilot agency” in China’s developmental state, the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC).
Existing research about China’s developmental state tends to address policy arrangements or systematic characteristics. But missing from the analysis is an in-depth account of how the developmental state works through its bureaucracy. In fact, it is surprising that such an important agency in China’s economic governance has received very thin coverage in the literature on the Chinese political economy. This paper seeks to fill in the gap. I demonstrate the centrality of development planning in NDRC’s function, which defines the approach of the Chinese developmental state. A sophisticated planning system has been gradually built, based on a fundamental skepticism about the unpredictability of market processes. The planning system, however, requires effective coordination, which is a challenge the Chinese developmental state needs to constantly attend to. But there is no guarantee that it can meet this challenge.
The second purpose is to provide an alternative perspective on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as I study NDRC’s role in this all-consuming policy initiative in the post-2013 China. While others have conceptualized the BRI as a continuation of China’s “state-mobilized globalization” since the late 1990s (Ye 2020), I argue instead that this is “state-guided globalization.” Unlike the “state-mobilized globalization” in previous times that was more opportunistic and exploratory, the post-2013 Chinese developmental state has developed a strategic vision for the kind of globalization it wants, as it is now equipped with a more sophisticated bureaucracy, as well as understanding about globalization learned through the earlier waves of “Going out.” The state’s guidance is best illustrated by NDRC’s coordination both domestically and internationally in the BRI. In this process, there is a conscious instrumentalization of international development cooperation for domestic developmental needs; but at the same time, the discourse about international development is actively pursued for legitimizing purposes.
In other words, my analysis points to a more capable and coherent developmental state in China than many portrayals of the BRI that highlight its inconsistency. Although BRI as a political project might not have become a reality if not for the particular political leadership that took power in 2012/2013, it is grounded in the institutions of China’s developmental state that had matured by the late 2010s, after three decades of institutional reform. Even though the initial conceptualization of the BRI was vague as it was motivated by the leader’s foreign policy ambitions, the substance of the BRI has been provided by its sophisticated bureaucracy, which has long been exercising prescriptive policies regarding domestic economic development. From the perspective of the developmental state, BRI is a politically enabled opportunity for it to extend its developmental practices beyond the Chinese borders.

Author

• Hong Zhang, Johns Hopkins University