Not Just Another Shadow Bank: Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism and the ‘Developmental’ Promise of Digital Financial Innovation

China's financial system is rapidly evolving. Both the emergence of shadow banking since 2009 and the growth of fintech since 2013 as forms of ‘non-bank credit intermediation’ have catalysed market-oriented institutional change beyond the banking system, with potentially far-reaching economic and political implications. In this article we assess these developments in the broader trajectory of China's financial reform and economic development. Through an analysis of two key sectors of non-bank credit intermediation – wealth management products and online lending platforms – we find that the growth of both shadow banking and fintech can be located in the same trajectory of reform and development that has animated Chinese financial policy since the early 1990s. The toleration of WMPs and promotion of internet lending constitutes the latest stage of the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to construct a more efficient and sustainable market economy whilst simultaneously preserving political supremacy and custodianship of macro-social development. The difference in policy response is commensurate with the degree to which each financial sector meets the Party's twin objectives of economic development and political control. Counterintuitively from a Western liberal perspective, the very forces behind deep and broad financial liberalisation are also consolidating the Chinese Communist Party's overall legitimacy and ruling capacity.