In Disaggregating China, Inc., Yeling Tan presents a fascinating analysis of how China's adoption of the liberal rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has interacted with the unique features of the country's domestic political economy to shape its development trajectory since WTO accession. Unpacking the notion of the Chinese state as a unitary actor, the book ascribes agency to government actors who navigated China's fragmented authoritarian political structure to design a diverse set of policies in response to trade liberalization commitments.
Specifically, the book focuses on policy responses among different levels of the administrative hierarchy (i.e. the central, provincial and local governments), within the central governing apparatus, and across different industries. In all three dimensions, she emphasizes how the probability of WTO sanctions for trade violations and the prospects of career advancement have shaped the incentive structures of government actors to give rise to heterogenous policy responses. Such an analytical framework allows her to show, for example, that in contrast to the central government, which tends to adopt more market-enhancing (regulatory) measures, provincial and local governments have been more favourably disposed towards market-shaping (developmental) and market-substituting (directive) policies, respectively. In a similar vein, the degree to which the central leadership was able to effectively discipline the bureaucracy, combined with the strength of the WTO leverage, helped explain the rise of state capitalism under the Hu–Wen leadership. However, despite the shift towards more active industrial policymaking by the central government, continued conflicts between the central and subnational governments also limited the former's ability to promote globally competitive national champions. In industries where subnational authorities enjoyed greater control over foreign direct investment, the centre's regime promotion incentives have more frequently come into conflict with the subnational governments’ career promotion objectives, undermining the coherence of industrial policy in these cases.
Tan supports her argument with quantitative textual analysis of an original dataset of Chinese government rules, regulations, and measures in the manufacturing sector. Utilizing a machine learning method, she identified the various topics embedded in these documents. This in turn allowed her to delineate the adoption of each of the strategies both across different parts of the government structure and along the time dimension. She further supplemented quantitative investigations with qualitative analysis of primary and secondary material as well as interview data. The use of both research methods enabled her to paint a rich picture of the policy instruments adopted by Chinese government actors to deal with the pressures of a globalizing economy and provided a solid foundation for a systematic account of the evolution of Chinese industrial policy in the post-WTO accession period.
In highlighting the diverse policy responses of Chinese government actors to global economic integration, the book challenges the notion that there exists a single, coherent Chinese economic model. This finding has important implications for ongoing debates about the degree to which policies of engaging China through the WTO may have failed to achieve their intended objectives and whether the diffusion of the Chinese model of economic development may negatively impinge on global economic governance structures. Although this observation does not necessarily depart from prevailing understanding that the complex and disjointed relationship between the central government and subnational actors has been a long-standing feature of China's model of fragmented authoritarianism, it does provide additional credence to such a conceptualization.
The book is most impressive in contrasting the responses of central, provincial, and local government actors. The variation in policy responses at the subnational level may merit further investigation. To the extent that provincial and local jurisdictions differ in their economic conditions and ability to withstand the forces of global economic competition, it seems reasonable to expect that these factors may have affected the calculations of subnational government officials either directly or indirectly through their assessments of career advancement prospects. Relatedly, as China's domestic political economy has become more porous, with non-governmental actors gaining growing influence over the decision-making process, one wonders if government responses may also have been shaped by the demand for greater liberalization (protection) from the winners (losers) of globalization. Overall, given that industrial policymaking represents an arena for bargaining, negotiation and conflict not only among bureaucratic agencies with different organizational goals and priorities, but also between government agencies, financial institutions, and state and non-state companies, further exploration of the political and economic forces that influence the variation in government strategies may represent a fruitful avenue of research.
These quibbles aside, the book represents a valuable contribution to the study of Chinese politics, political economy and foreign economic policy. Tan effectively builds on the “fragmented authoritarianism” framework to illuminate the multiple economic policy trajectories within China's complex authoritarian structure and, in doing so, highlights the importance of an in-depth analysis of China's domestic political economy for understanding its responses to external pressures for trade liberalization. The book is highly recommended for students, scholars and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of the changing dynamics of China's domestic political economy, China's role in global economic governance, and the politics of globalization.
