Chinese Capitalism: Beyond Variety?

Hosted by the Confucius Institute, this talk will consider the extent to which the Chinese economy can be meaningfully characterized as capitalist; the character of its state form and recent development path; and its position within—or beyond—conventional understandings of capitalist variety.

Jamie Peck
Canada Research Chair in Urban and Regional Political Economy
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia

This talk will consider the extent to which the Chinese economy can be meaningfully characterized as capitalist; the character of its state form and recent development path; and its position within—or beyond—conventional understandings of capitalist variety. The analysis seeks to articulate an alternative to the orthodox varieties of capitalism framework, the “variegated capitalism” approach characteristic of geographical political economy. Specifically, this lecture will situate China’s mode of political economy in the global system through a comparative analysis with other modes in the United States, Japan, and Germany. Through this analysis, this lecture attempts to illustrate the innovation embedded in China’s economic development and unravel the inevitable cycle of crisis that China has to endure, as experienced by other countries.

This lecture is presented by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies and the UO Confucius Institute for Global China Studies and is cosponsored by the Department of Geography.