ABSTRACT
The political-economic evolution of post-Mao China has been portrayed as an historically inevitable embrace of neoliberalism; an exemplification of the East Asian developmental state; and an extension of Leninist state capitalism. This chapter evaluates these portrayals through a comparative perspective. It places the shifting logics of socioeconomic regulation in China in relation to the global neoliberal hegemony since the 1980s and the concomitant shifts in regulatory approaches of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The comparative analysis demonstrates that China has creatively adapted and repurposed regulatory logics from the Washington Consensus and East Asian policies to consolidate its Lenin-inspired version of state-led development. This reinforces the notion of the ‘China Model’ as simultaneously open-ended and path-dependent.
