On Tobias ten Brink’s China’s Capitalism: A Paradoxical Route to Economic Prosperity , Philadelphia PA, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019

Abstract

*Correspondence: n.a.de.graaff@vu.nl No doubt China's rise to power and the question of how the Chinese leadership has been able to successfully combine a one-party communist political system with a thriving capitalist economic system—lifting 850 million people out of poverty and becoming the world's second largest economy in just a few decades—is one of today's key questions; posing a significant puzzle to academics and policy makers, in particular in the West. Many volumes, special issues and articles have been devoted to try and define and understand the particular kind of capitalism China hence represents (Arrighi, 2007; Naughton and Tsai, 2015; Nölke et al., 2015; McNally, 2020; De Graaff et al., 2020a), and a multifold of different conceptualizations have been put to the fore, from Sino-capitalism (McNally, 2012) to state-permeated capitalism (Nölke et al., 2015) and state-directed capitalism (De Graaff, 2020b). Yet, the question remains how to understand and explain 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics' (Huang, 2008), and the way in which it has developed and will likely further develop. This recent book by Tobias ten Brink, China's Capitalism. A Paradoxical Route to Economic Prosperity, is a timely, ambitious and comprehensive contribution to this ongoing debate. The book is also a welcome intervention in a public debate that is increasingly alarmist and confrontational, hampered—at times even blinded—by what still seems to be a huge lack of understanding, misconceptions and a quite persistent Western-centric bias (see also Acharya and Buzan, 2017). These misunderstandings and biases also have real consequences. The anti-China sentiments sparked by for instance the Trump administration's trade-war—which is in essence also a contest for leadership in, for example, technology and setting the rules of trade, competition, production and so forth—are widely shared amongst the American foreign policy establishment and coincide with a much more cautious and even protectionist approach in many core European states. This rarely leads to long-term, sustainable policy making and highlights the need for deeply informed, nuanced perspectives and analyses, to guide today's decision makers and leaders. It can therefore be hoped that this publication will also find its way to the corridors of power somehow.