ABSTRACT
The focus of international political economy (IPE) inside China has shifted gradually in the last two decades from international trade to international money and finance. Despite the burgeoning attention on money
and finance, why have we not seen a major substantive contribution from China to the global conversation of IPE in these core issue areas? Or, to put it in another way, why is there yet to be a Chinese ‘Susan Strange’ or ‘Benjamin Cohen’? Is it simply about language barriers or a fixation on national preoccupations? Or is there more to the story? What is needed for Chinese IPE to make innovative empirical or transformational theoretical-conceptual contributions to the global conversation on international money and finance? This article examines the evolution of IPE study on international money
and finance inside China and evaluates the state of its development. The central argument is that during the formative period for Chinese IPE, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, Chinese scholars paid inconsistent, punctuated and arguably insufficient attention to money and finance, and that, despite the escalating focus inside China, these issues remain as nascent areas of study. This underdevelopment is especially noticeable when compared to the depth and breadth of IPE research on global finance and money in North America and Britain/Europe. The current state of knowledge is understandable if one considers that China’s transformation into an influential monetary actor and creditor nation is a recent phenomenon, starting around 2004-05, whereas the country’s status as a leading trading nation and the world’s factory has a longer history.1
