The rise of China and its impact on world economic stratification and re-stratification

Abstract

The article provides a framework for understanding the historical trajectory of China’s rise and its impact on the conventional stratification of the capitalist world-economy of the core, semi-periphery and periphery. Inspired by World-System Theory, the author analyses the process through which China’s global economic rise is challenging the status quo of the world-economy’s established structure. In other words, China’s economic rise is modifying the ‘classical’ stratification of the world economic zones as conceptualised by World-System Theory in terms of the core, semi-peripheral and peripheral relationships and in terms of the composition and proportional size of the three economic zones. As a result, the conventional stratification of a small core, a scattered larger semi-periphery and a vast periphery is being altered. The article goes through China’s different positions in the world’s economic stratification during different periods, and concludes that the global transformations led by China’s economic rise is leading the world towards a regional and global re-division of labour, which is exerting a great deal of impact on both the Global North and the Global South in terms of opportunities and challenges.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Xing Li is Professor of International Relations at Aalborg University, Denmark. Email:[email protected]

Notes

1 According to China Business Review, in 2013 agricultural products and commodities remained the US’s largest export to China, but shipments of higher-value products such as vehicles and airplanes were also growing. According to statista.com, in 2017, the top US exports to China were civilian aircraft and oilseed grains. This data indicates that although the US is undoubtedly a core state, its economy still falls into different “economic zones” (a concept of World-System Theory) and contains both core-like and peripheral products.

2 In 1974, then Chinese Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) explained the Three Worlds Theory in a speech to the United Nations, justifying China's cooperation with non-communist countries. Deng Xiaoping also emphasised that China was a socialist country, a developing nation, and that China belonged to the ‘Third World.’ The Chinese Government and people firmly supported all the oppressed peoples and nations in their just struggles. Deng also openly declared that China was not and would never be a superpower in the future. This promise is facing serious challenges now, as China rapidly becomes the second-largest economy in the world as well as a rising military power.

3 The Chinese population was 972,205,442 in 1978 when the country started its open-door policy. In 2019 the population is 1,433,783,686. Data retrieved from <https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/>.

4 The concept of the ‘flying geese’ was first coined by Japanese scholar Kaname Akamatsu, who theorised an economic development pattern by using a flock of flying geese to explain the economic relationship between developed and developing states. Akamatsu’s theory is seen to correspond to the core argument of world system theory, that core states extract economic surplus and transfer profit from the dependent periphery in order to consolidate their leading position in the world-economy (Yeung 2001, 141). However, some other literature also indicates the fact that the second layer of the flying geese, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, were able to catch up and move up, vis-à-vis their economic stratification, due to their vital geopolitical position during the Cold War and due to their internal dynamism (Deyo 1988; Chen 1990; Haggard 1990).

5 The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China, and the Bank of China.

6 Latin America is in closest proximity to the US, and the region has been labeled ‘America’s backyard.’ Likewise, Africa is traditionally connected with major European powers through its colonial history. The continent is also identified as Europe’s resource-rich backyard.