ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the examination of the interface between states and financial markets. It utilises the transformation of the Chinese state as an example to develop several propositions. The chapter shows that the Chinese state, in bringing the management of sovereign borrowing and state assets in line with principles of finance, has rebuilt itself into a shareholding state with an extensive system of state asset management. Much of the analysis of the financialization of the economy has stopped at the conceptual boundary between economics and politics. Financialization refers to transformations in the structure of the markets or the organization of capitalism, while the question of the state remains outside of the analytical purview. Empirical and theoretical puzzles remained as to why states liberalized finance and whether this promotional role has exhausted all the ways in which the state and financialization were related to each other.
