Goodbye (Chinese) Shadow Banking, Hello Market‐based Finance

ABSTRACT Shadow banking in developing and emerging countries (DECs) oscillates between two semantic poles. One definition is typically deployed by scholars for the narrow analysis of non‐bank financial intermediation as a viable alternative to banking. The other, more recent, definition circulates in the policy world to capture a new agenda of engineering (securities) market‐based finance. This article argues that this second definition captures the essential but neglected aspect of shadow banking in DECs. The ‘shadow banking into market‐based finance’ narrative reaffirms the celebratory tone of the financial globalization cum liberalization thesis dominant before the global financial crisis. It seeks to depoliticize contentious debates about capital flows and the constraints that financialized globalization poses to development, instead asking DECs to encourage portfolio flows, relax the regulatory grip on shadow funding markets and tap into the growing global demand for securities that marks the new age of asset management. China illustrates this argument well. In joining the global push for market‐based finance with the ambition to further its RMB internationalization agenda, China underestimates the (Minsky‐type) fragilities involved.