Live: Second China Shock @BISA 2026

I'm going to come back to you in a second, Frank.

This is, I think, a really clear picture of the big set of structural changes that are going on.

We've already heard about overproduction, how this relates to a global reorganization of production, how this relates to domestic political legitimacy, labor market shifts, and we're getting to get to the green transition as a kind of congenital shift that is enabling China's rise.

But amid these really fascinating and deep structural changes, let's talk about agency.

How do host states, firms, communities negotiate and contest China-led supply chains? And what does this reveal about agency in the global South, Frank?

Thank you for the question.

So, well, I think for people that know my research, of course, speaking about agencies is really, you know, like kind of the core of my scholarship.

But actually, I would like to start speaking about structure because it's fundamental to speak about structure if we want to discuss how actors move into the global economy.

And I think the second China shock is important to remember operates through the structures of global capitalism.

So when imagining the role of China in the global economy and as well as global production, we should not forget the Chinese actors do not act in a vacuum.

And it is often the case when doing kind of geopolitical analysis that we imagine these actors.

That's, you know, like very powerful and kind of, yeah.

self-independent actors, but that is not the case.

So Chinese actors, including the CCP, become capitalist actors in that they exploit the advantages of global production and particularly the advantages that global production affords to powerful capitalist actors.

So China's rise, in my view, needs to be read more generally in a story of capitalist innovation and moving beyond just, again, like these geopolitical lenses.

I imagine it as some sort of counter-movement to Western capitalism or some sort of, again, like new global structure that is countering Western capitalism.

And And it's important to discuss how a large chunk of Chinese investment moves through Western tax havens, exploits and negotiates exceptions to fiscal policies and labor regulations and extracts resources and surplus values from colonized or post-colonial regions elsewhere.

to support domestic economy.

And this is not to say that China is uniquely evil, but that it's just a pretty common powerful actor.

And so to respond to your question, in this kind of attempt to normalize China as a powerful global actor, we also need to kind of pluralize our perspective on what actors involved in China's global capitalism are.

And this connects with what Jianli was saying before.

So we need to pay attention to the diverse Chinese institutions, so not just China, the ones that receive more attention, for example, banks, but also looking at companies, SOEs and private, as well as diaspora communities.

But I think what is even more important is to look at the role of China's partners and interlocutors, which are not just foreign capital, state or private, but also civil society and people up to the level of the everyday.

And looking at the Global South, it's easy to imagine how local elites exert agency in the localization of Chinese production.

But from a class perspective, local state and class elites enter in a coalition with Chinese capital and can often promote joint enterprises.