China, geoeconomics and the ‘new’ state capitalism

In contributing to a critical examination of geoeconomics, this article challenges the prevalent phenomenon of ‘geoeconomic othering’ ingrained within certain mainstream International Relations (IR) analyses. Focusing on the case of state capitalism in China, we argue that in typical orientalist fashion, some predominantly Anglo-American analyses tend to disproportionally emphasise China’s distinctiveness at the expense of glaring similarities with Western polities, and use this construct to normalise the neoliberal project and the geopolitical behaviours of the Global North. The task of a critical geoeconomics is to unpack these geographical imaginaries, to transcend essentialising depictions of the state and to explore the dialectic entanglements between state and corporate power.