China Joins the International Finance Community

One thing I find useful for seeing the global political economy at work is look at The Economist as often as possible — sure, it has a very strong pro-liberal state narrative, but it can be seen as the publication in which one can read the regime of truths that the liberal state is espousing at the time. I came across this article within their website.

In the article, The Economist is praising China’s efforts to put forth a development bank to a certain extent. On one hand, the correspondent supports the better use of their savings, but China is basically throwing away their money by following, to use McMichael’s language, The Development Project by issuing loans to Venezuela, for example, who ended up just “wasting the money,” according to this author. What is interesting is that in this example of The Economist, we see the push for China to use these development loans, instead, by “hewing closer to the model of the Bretton Woods institution…” That, I feel, is a strong statement. Essentially, it is calling for China to jump on board to the “Globalization Project.”

China’s emergence into the development lending provides insight into what could be China’s pathway into either resurrecting the Development Project or perhaps into a quasi-privatization in which they are allowed to enter another country’s economy for resource extraction for their gain. In the case of Venezuela, China does have a interest in energy, so they probably expect to give up some of their oil resources to the thirsty Chinese economy — which looks like is already happening.