Financial Repression and Relational Financial Power

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the potential of developmental states to develop relational power in global finance. Section 5.1 looks into the relational power deriving from Japan’s emergence as a net creditor in the 1980s. Section 5.2 analyzes the reasons for China’s accumulation of foreign exchange reserves and its resulting emergence as a creditor state, looks into China’s debate on its growing stockpile of reserves and sheds light on the bureaucratic rivalries between China’s sovereign wealth managers. Against the backdrop of these examinations, it assesses China’s relational financial power potential by putting the size of China’s reserves in a comparative perspective, by estimating the probable duration of China’s capital outflows and by analyzing the government’s control over these outflows as well as the mutual vulnerability of China and the US as its major debtor. Last but not least, it looks into China’s attempts to exercise its relational financial power. Section 5.3 compares China’s relational financial power with the relational financial power of the Japanese developmental state.