The Rise of Financial Thinking in the Chinese Economic Bureaucracy: Career Trajectories and Organizational Networks

• In Event: 355 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Networks of Credit and Trust

Abstract

This paper explains the fall of industrial policy and the rise of financial thinking in the economic bureaucracy of the Chinese state in the past two decades. It attributes the policy paradigm shift to a generational transformation among policy makers marked by different trajectories of organizational socialization and loci of knowledge formation. The earlier generation rose from managerial positions in factories and local governments, and believed that state intervention should center on organizational linkages between the state and industry. By contrast, the second generation of economic policy elites has worked in macroeconomic research institutes of the central state, and has forged a monetary view of the economy which favors building up tools for financial control of the state. Methodologically, this paper employs social sequence and network analysis to analyze career patterns of Chinese officials. It attempts to demonstrate how these methods can identify latent bureaucratic collectivities, unpack the “slow episodes” of policy movement, and delineate the endogenous role of state elites in these processes.

Author

• Yingyao Wang, Yale University