ABSTRACT
During the 1990s, ‘globalization’ and ‘regionalization’ became fashionable terms in the study of international political economy (IPE). These phenomena cannot be explained by a single causal mechanism but must be seen as complex, uneven and contradictory trends that result from many different causal processes (Jessop 2001: 27). In East Asia,1 the nature and scope of these impacts on the emerging markets of less developed countries, especially China, are problematic issues, since they challenge, first of all, some basic assumptions about the scale of economic activity in relation to the Chinese national economy, and, second, the pattern of China’s international relations based on a statist approach. In recent years, China’s international economic relations have been increasingly determined by the relationship between local state actors and foreign firms. Since economic reform, China has been the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI)2 among all developing countries, and in 2002 China even surpassed the United States (US), becoming the largest recipient of FDI in the world. The large injection of FDI, the transfer of technology and the abundant supply of cheap labour have led to China’s success in the development of its foreign trade. Spatially, China’s distinctive patterns and processes of integration with the world economy are most clearly visible at the regional and firm levels of interactions, e.g. as demonstrated in the case of the rapid development of industrial agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.3
