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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
2008—Annus Horribilis for the world economy—produced successive food, energy and financial crises, initially devastating particularly the global poor, but quickly extending to the commanding heights of the US and core economies and ushering in the sharpest downturn since the 1930s depression.
As all nations strive to respond to the financial gridlock that began in the United States and quickly sent world industrial production and trade plummeting, there has been much discussion of the ability of the high-flying Chinese economy to weather the storm, of the prospects for the intertwined US and Chinese economies, even of the potential for China to rise to a position of regional or global primacy. The present article critically explores these possibilities.
• I am indebted to Andrew DeWit, Gavan McCormack, R. Taggart Murphy and especially Giovanni Arrighi for suggestions of sources and perspectives on the issues.
1. James Fallows, “China's Way Forward,” Atlantic Monthly, April, 2009.
2. “There are monetary echoes from the 1930s too,” China Financial Markets January 21, 2009.
3. “Did SAFE really buy that many US (and global) equities?,” Follow the Money, March 19, 2009.
4. “In Downturn, China Sees Path to Growth, The New York Times, March 17, 2009.
5. “Steeling for 80% Export Growth,” Shanghai Daily, March 19, 2009.
6. “This Week's Raw Steel Production,” The American Iron and Steel Institute, Steelworks, March 14, 2009. I am indebted to Andrew DeWit for data on Japanese and US steel production and exports.
7. Interview with David Harvey, “The Winding Paths of Capital,” New Left Review 56, Mar-Apr 2009. See also The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Time (London: Verso, 1994) and Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the 21st Century (London: Verso, 2008).
8. Arrighi notes, however, factors which could work in China's favor: (1) the importance of demographic size should be left open and (2) the possibility that China has more to gain from the US getting stuck in wars that it cannot win—as envisaged in Adam Smith in Beijing (part III)—should be left open. Personal communication March 23, 2009.
9. Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver and Melvyn Dubofsky, eds., “Labor Unrest in the World-Economy, 1870-1990”, special issue of Review, vol. 18, no. 1, Winter, 1995. The analysis is further developed in Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
10. Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds., Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 2nd edition, 2003.
11. “Double Movement in China,” Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 13, 2009.
13. For early rumblings of North China drought, see Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) and Revolution, Resistance and Reform in Village China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
14. See Ching Kwan Lee and Mark Selden, “Inequality and Its Enemies in Revolutionary and Reform China,” Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 13, 2009.
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