It was my great delight to find myself again at Oxford and with great thanks to Patricia (Tia) Thornton, to present some thoughts on the complicated topic of Chinese state owned enterprises (CSOEs) at the Oxford China Law Center.
These thoughts, organized as "Chinese State-Owned Companies: Congruence and Dissonance in Outbound Investment," explore CSOEs as an advanced instrument of Chinese Marxist markets theory in China's Leninist New Era, with a focus on outbound investment in the Americas and Europe. Under ordinary circumstances this topic might present a bauble of passing interest to China specialists and to students of Marxist-Leninist and comparative systems. Nonetheless, the topic becomes far more interesting when the forms and narratives of Chinese economic theory, projected outward through its CSOEs, begin to have a substantial effect on the theory and practice of trade, of the application of principles of human rights and sustainability in economic activities, and ultimately on the current contest for control of the fundamental principles of inter-collective activity.
The presentation starts with the "original sin:" the generation long effort to domesticate Chinese Marxist-Leninist economic collectives within the deep normative expectations of an international trade system founded on principles of markets driven activity and liberal democratic values. Not that any of this was wrong, just that it set up the inevitability of conflict when, after almost a generation China became a producer rather than an consumer of economic and political trade and economic activity norms. It is necessary then to understand the CSOE within the current expression of Chinese Marxist-Leninism (in its current "New Era". It serves as the organization of state assets whicvh, along with markets, are meant to serve the advancement of the core political and normative objectives of the nation, guided by and under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. It has been the great project of liberal democratic narrative normativity to disabuse the Chinese of this starting notion for the organization of public life. Anf it has been resistance to those efforts that have brought us to the current situation. That situation, operationally, is marked by a deep web of guidance, policy and law, which for the central (leading) CSOEs is managed through organs of the Chinese State Council, but within which the CPC is embedded at every level. The organization of assets with a purpose also mark the constitution of Chinese Leninist macro economics policy, especially as they touch on risk, human rights and sustainability. That is explored next, in the context f the great divergence between the two systems marked by their approach to risk and the application of prevent-mitigate-and remedy principles. From this emerges Socialist expressions of trader and human-rights/sustainability. With this in hand it is now possible to begin to consider the question: to what extent does that divergence produce operational dissonance when CSOEs operate abroad? The short answer is this: ion the context of operational decision making the differences are largely one of degree, with CSOEs more inclined to consider remedy as a viable strategy, and in managing their own risk will negotiate with local stakeholders. The differences are much larger in the context of initial decisions to invest in projects. It is here that divergence will have the most profound effect. And in the process the liberal democratic impulse to sanction (ghost) offending investments may meet its greatest challenge within the operational parameters of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (eg here).
The PowerPoint of the presentation follow. They may also be accessed here. For SOEs, global trade, and the calculus of risk, and rights (human and sustainability based) in economic activity the discussion is just beginning.
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