Taking Off for Marketization: China’s Initiatives on Economic Resolutions

• In Event: Reshaping the Liberal Order: Strategies of Contestation and Change

Abstract

Third World countries are said to have been insistent on the idea of authoritative allocation in the economic field, and are reluctant to cede their discretionary power vis-à-vis relevant international institutions. Although such developing countries have come to accept the idea of marketization with the tide of globalization, there are temporal gaps as to when they domestically accept the system and when they officially commit to the idea in international institutions. For example, it took China seven years to officially talk about South-South cooperation after its inauguration. This paper theorizes that it is the realistic motivation to dominate the market that renders the timing of commitment on the international level. It first introduces a new dataset to show that the larger its power becomes vis-à-vis its rivals, China favors less references to the respect for state autonomy in the economic draft resolutions at the United Nations General Assembly. Secondly, it takes up the case study on the draft resolutions on South-South cooperation and the Least Developed Countries to verify the hypothesis.

Author

• Tomoko Takahashi, Kyoto University