ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how globalizing actor-networks, particularly those associated with international business and finance, are engaging with, reshaping and being reshaped by Chinese capitalism. I argue that although familism and guanxi relationships continue to constitute the social organization of Chinese capitalism, the concept of an exclusive and inward-oriented Chinese capitalism needs to be reconfigured to recognize the constitutive nature of a wide range of non-Chinese actors and their powerful networks within and outside the Asia-Pacific region. As discussed in Chapter 2, this transformation occurs primarily because globalizing actor-networks increasingly play fundamental (albeit uneven) roles in shaping the social organization and economic practices of key actors in Chinese capitalism (Olds and Yeung, 1999; Yeung 2000a). The search for new sources of capital beyond the Asia-Pacific region, for example, has brought with it many opportunities as well as tensions; tensions generated by the ever-shifting interaction of ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese actornetworks. As ethnic Chinese business groups accept the tension between losing personal or family control and acquiring access to critical financial resources, they become enrolled in a diverse range of international business actor-networks that have no significant Chinese dimension to them (see Chapter 2). Conversely, international business actors and institutions also seek to generate knowledge about Chinese capitalism as this knowledge benefits them materially when their recommendations and investments generate good profits and returns for their shareholders all over the world. International financial firms need to know whether to invest in specific ethnic Chinese firms, international credit-ratings firms need to know what rating to recommend in relation to the economic potential of specific firms and the international business media need to develop and disseminate knowledge about these firms via texts that are attractive to the global business community. The interactive engagement of such overlapping international business actor-networks generates further interest from additional globalizing actor-networks (such as those running through
credit-ratings agencies and, more diffusely, supra-state institutions), as well as other types of actor-networks that run through government research arms, academic institutions and the popular media. These latter types of actor-networks are more interested in the analysis and representation of Chinese capitalism than in the direct satisfaction of their material goals. Irrespective of their intentions though, all these non-Chinese globalizing actor-networks generate products (e.g. books, reports, quotes, concepts, press releases, policy statements, contracts) that circulate via technology information on Chinese capitalism in a variety of geographical scales (see Chapter 1).
