China, colonialism, neocolonialism and globalised modes of accumulation

The idea that China is the supreme overseas capital accumulator is part of a discourse of China as colonialist or neocolonialist. The discourse exists not because Chinese behaviour aligns with scholarly understandings of colonialism or neocolonialism, but as a rhetorical device to discredit China as the US’s ‘strategic rival’. In this paper we show that China does not practice colonialism or neocolonialism and examine the question of how China’s activities fit into modes of globalised capital accumulation abroad. We argue that China’s mode overlaps, but is also distinct from, the East Asian developmental states’ approach. It is even more dissimilar to the US’s archetypal neoliberalism. Two areas in which China most diverges are its deployment of state-owned enterprises and Communist Party of China leadership, and the concomitant alignment of Chinese firms overseas with home and host-state policies. In analysing Chinese capital accumulation abroad, we adumbrate a Chinese mode that reflects ‘two semis’: China’s semi-peripheral status and its semi-neoliberalism.