The economic growth of China: enabling politico-institutional and socio-cultural factors

Arestis, Philip; Karagiannis, Nikolaos; Lee, Sangkwon

The focus of this paper is to analyze sociocultural and politico-institutional factors that contributed greatly to China’s economic expansion. In doing so, the article reveals the importance of long-standing heterodox threads, namely, the role of history, political economy, institutional structures, local culture, social psychology, and international relations. In contrast to neoliberalism’s theoretical fallacies and destructive socio-economic outcomes, it is argued here that purposeful developmental intervention is crucial as it can promote the growth, positioning, quality, and competitiveness of local industries in international markets. The line of argument of this contribution is as follows. Through a lens of political history, the first section analyzes the country’s past development efforts. Subsequently, the main sections discuss important aspects of an alternative economic development framework in the context of China; these are based on a highly interventionist, heterodox, developmental state analysis and are examined by placing special emphasis on its politico-institutional and sociocultural traits. Finally, summary and conclusions end the paper.