Crony Comprador Capitalism

“This timely and highly original book mercilessly dissects the sources of China’s impending ‘imperial decline’. Its unique insights rest equally on western and Chinese scholarship and on a large measure of inside knowledge. It offers a trenchant comparative analysis of the evolution of China’s ‘decrepit Leninist Leviathan’ from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping. And its conclusion that the economic illiteracy and personal venality of the Communist leadership has locked China into dependent development and helped summon up the ‘new Cold War’ is brilliantly provocative.” – MacGregor Knox, Stevenson Professor of International History emeritus, The London School of Economics and Political Science “Jianyong Yue’s book provides a freshening and insightful perspective on China’s development over the past several decades. It is very impressive in its historical depth, conceptual power, and analytical rigor; its explanation of China’s economic ‘successes’ and their sociopolitical quintessence hits the nail on the head.” – Guoguang Wu, Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University’s Center on China’s Economy and Institutions This book offers a multidisciplinary redefinition of China's model of crony comprador capitalism. The author argues that this model emerged through the fusion of market Leninism and global capitalism in the early 1990s within the post-Cold War and post-Communist global context. While driving robust export-led growth, this approach hindered China's structural transformation and limited its ascent, ironically leading to the regime's accelerating totalitarian turn and the onset of a new Cold War. In line with the call for ‘Capitalism 3.0,’ the book advocates Western decoupling from China and promoting the country's transition to a democratic developmental state, fostering a safer world for democracy over autocracy. It will be of interest to academics and policy-makers in a wide range of fields, including political economy, political studies, international relations, and economic history. Jianyong Yue is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and previously taught Chinese politics and development at LSE and King’s College London. He published China’s Rise in the Age of Globalization: Myth or Reality? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).