Faced with the challenge of accommodating diversity, liberal justice and human rights promise to provide an adequate normative framework for securing equal liberties and rights for all. However, despite great advancements in theory and law, discrimination endures, and these promises have not been fulfilled for enduring minorities, especially in places of ethno-national conflict. The problem this chapter aims to highlight is that while liberal democracy and human rights frameworks provide us with a desirable ideal, they fail to provide useful guidance for progress, from a situation of ethno-national conflict – which often involves political exclusion, sharp inequalities, low mutual trust, and high animosity – to more just and peaceful societies that respect the human rights of all. Self-determination is currently blocked as a legal remedy; states are reluctant to grant minority rights, especially in cases where majority–minority relations are in conflict; and scholars of equality law, asserting that any real advancement is blocked because of the individualist orientation of the law, send us back to collective measures.

At the opening of the 13th National People's Congress in Beijing, the then premier, Li Keqiang, presented the 2022 Government Work Report, which laid out policy priorities for the coming year. China analysts scurried away to count mentions of “Dual Circulation” and of “Common Prosperity”, a term that had achieved even greater prominence in 2021. Those looking came back almost empty-handed. Instead, Xinhua described the term “High-Quality Development” as “grabbing the spotlight as one of the catchphrases”. At times in China, policy pronouncements seem no more than an alphabet soup of disconnected phrases, falling in and out of fashion. It can be hard to understand which represent lasting priorities and which are simply slogans of the day.

“Dual Circulation” is but one term among many mentioned in policy speeches. How do these different terms fit together? What is the mix between slogan and substance? The consistent element is the central – or, in the phrasing of CPC discourse, “core” – role of Xi Jinping. Rather than an alphabet soup of terms, think of them as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of Chinese economic policy that together make up Xiconomics. In addition to Dual Circulation, six more jigsaw pieces help make sense of the context, objectives and overall policy agenda of Xi Jinping and the CPC. Fitted together, they highlight the differences between China's domestic environment and the rest of the world. These very differences demonstrate the distinction between the internal and the external. For foreign businesses, they provide substance to the cliché that “China is different” that goes beyond differences in consumer preferences and competitive environment. They reinforce the importance of Dual Circulation as a framework with which to assess the economic and business landscape.

THE CHINA POLICY PUZZLE

This chapter describes these six additional pieces and attempts to fit them together. The first is a simple fact: the CPC rules China and Xi Jinping rules the CPC. Although no individual's hold on power is guaranteed, Xi is widely acknowledged as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. Second is a phrase, the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese people”. Xi uses this expression to place his CPC agenda for China in the broad sweep of history. The third piece is the new definition of success for China's development. In the language of Party ideology, Xi Jinping has changed the “principal contradiction” that all policy must address.

This chapter examines the embedded liberal perspective of the Anglo-American thinkers who played a lead role in designing Bretton Woods order, including John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. These thinkers endorsed the broad liberal goals of boosting global prosperity, international peace, and individual freedom, but they argued that these goals could only be met with a new kind of institutionalized liberal multilateralism that would make an open world economy compatible with various kinds of active public management of the economy. The roots of embedded liberalism can be found in efforts to reformulate the international side of classical economic liberal thought earlier in the twentieth century, including by thinkers such as Jehangir Coyajee.and John Hobson. The promoters of embedded liberalism at Bretton Woods sought to accommodate not just new ideas of domestic social security and activist macroeconomic management in Western Europe and North America but also the Soviet Union’s commitment to central planning and neomercantilist views prominent in many less industrialized regions. At the same time, they made much less effort to engage with the perspectives discussed in the second part of this volume.

Chapter 3 explores the social conditions and normative constraints that influence the achievements that can be obtained through partition. The chapter’s main argument is that although novel ideas for “homogenizing” territories may arise, a reasonable theory for peace must assume that forcible transfers of population in any form are prohibited, and consequently that demographically homogenous territories are unattainable. By looking at the social realities in the four cases of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Israel–Palestine, the chapter illustrates that in most actual cases of ethno-national conflict, partition does not offer a viable course of action, if the goal is the creation of ethnically homogenous territories that can become “defensible enclaves” or “true” nation-states. Even in those cases where territorial partition make sense – as in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, in postdivision Cyprus, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the ethnic cleansing – peace must be attained not on the basis of ethnically homogenous nation-states, but rather on the basis of ethnically heterogenous territories and states. Thus, the chapter concludes that while territorial partition may be considered as one tool for peacemaking in ethno-national conflicts, its limitations must be recognized, and attained with other policies for accommodating ethno-national diversity.

Between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Marxism emerged as a major rival to both economic liberalism and neomercantilism in debates about the international dimensions of political economy around the world. With their focus on ending class inequality and exploitation by challenging capitalism, Marxists put prioritized distinctive goals from those prioritized by economic liberals and neomercantilists in the pre-1945 years. This chapter examines Karl Marx’s ideas about the world economy as well as those of a number of his influential European (including Russian) followers. The latter include thinkers commonly discussed in IPE textbooks, such as Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, but also other thinkers who usually receive less attention, such as Carl Ballod, Rudolph Hilferding, Henry Hyndman, Karl Kautsky, Leon Trotsky, and Georg Vollmar. The chapter highlights important disagreements among these various Marxist thinkers on issues such as free trade, imperialism, multilateral cooperation, strategies for challenging capitalism, the prospects for socialism in one country, and the relationship between capitalism and war.

European Marxism diffused widely to other parts of the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, attracting support from many thinkers whose contributions to Marxist thought about the international dimensions of political economy deserve to be better known. This chapter focuses on some innovative and important Marxist thinkers from Trinidad (C.L.R. James, George Padmore), China (Mao Zedong), India (Manabendra Nath Roy), Indonesia (Tan Malaka), Japan (Kōtoku Shūsui, Takahashi Kamekichi, Sano Manabu), and Peru (José Carlos Mariátegui). These thinkers were important not just because they became well known in their local contexts and, in some cases, in wider international Marxist networks. They also sometimes developed ideas that predated better-known European ones and they often called attention to issues that received less attention in European Marxist debates, such as racial discrimination, Eurocentrism, the relationship between Marxism and Islam, the nature and impact of imperialism outside of Europe, and revolutionary politics in places subject to imperialism.

On 23 July 2021 China's State Council issued new rules banning for-profit companies from tutoring in core curriculum subjects and banned foreign investment in the sector. No new licences were to be issued and all existing operators were instructed to register as non-profits. Overnight the share prices of US-listed Chinese commercial education providers fell 60 per cent. Stocks such as New Oriental Education and TAL Education traded more than 90 per cent below their record highs of March 2021. Bloomberg reported that investment analysts were scurrying to read the collected writings of Xi Jinping,1 the three volumes of his book The Governance of China. After all, in 2018 Xi had already written: “The conscientious [education] industry cannot turn into a profit-seeking industry. The off-campus training institutions must be regulated by the law so that they can return to the normal track of educating people.” China's regulatory environment was perhaps not so opaque and uncertain after all.

Were all the clues hiding in plain sight? Could the crackdown in the educational sector have been foreseen? In part, yes – although the world is not that simple. Official speeches, books and other writings, many delivered by Xi Jinping or bearing his name, provide a wealth of information on both the rationale and specifics of Chinese policy direction. These materials are frequently designed expressly to provide guidance to Party officials at all levels across China about the priorities and principles that should guide actions and implementation at the local level. In a sense, The Governance of China provides the foundation for the governance of business in China, for the role that business is expected to play and the way that it is expected to operate.

Party publications are important too. One particularly significant journal is Qiushi (求是: Seeking Truth), the CPC's principal official journal. Qiushi states that it “serves as an important ideological and theoretical medium for guiding the work of the entire Party and the country as a whole”.2 Many foreign business leaders and analysts underestimate the seriousness and intent behind such statements. Indeed, the often dry, even turgid, style can be off-putting.

In October 1978, at the very start of China's reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping visited Japan. Among those he met was Konosuke Matsushita, founder of Matsushita Electric (later renamed Panasonic). Although he continued to talk of China's self-reliance, Deng asked Matsushita to help with foreign technology and investment: “China will embark on a modernization drive. While mainly relying on ourselves, China is considering drawing on foreign technology and investment. Can you give a little help to our modernization efforts?” Matsushita replied, “I will do everything to help”. In the early 1980s Matsushita exported manufacturing equipment to China and transferred technology in over 150 projects, including televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, compressors and motors. Forty years later, to the month, Tesla came to a transformed China to buy a plot of land in Shanghai for US$140 million and build a factory to serve China's booming EV market.

HOW MULTINATIONAL BUSINESS DEVELOPED IN CHINA

From 1979 onwards China offered multinationals the promise of a new low-cost manufacturing location. Special economic zones such as Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Xiamen were established in the southern and eastern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. These led the way in offering favourable regulations, tax incentives and other policies to attract foreign investment. Depending on the region and the industry sector, foreign-invested enterprises enjoyed preferential treatment over Chinese companies. The benefits included tax reductions, reduced customs duties, simplified procedures for enterprise registrations and visa provisions and streamlined entry and exit provisions. In the automotive sector, Volkswagen (VW) was among the first foreign multinationals to emphasize China. Volkswagen first entered China in 1978, and in 1984 it signed a joint venture agreement to manufacture engines and Santana cars. Although the planned engine production was mostly for export, the cars were to be sold to government buyers and for use as taxis. But in 1984 Volkswagen saw only limited local market potential. Asked about the prospects for China as a major automotive market, the VW chairman stated, “We’re convinced this will not happen in the next twenty-four years.” Twenty-four years later China was the world's second largest market in terms of units, and in 2009 it overtook the United States to become the world's largest market in volume terms.

The concluding chapter summarizes the case for embracing a wider approach to the deep intellectual roots of the IPE field in the pre-1945 period that goes beyond the common focus on just thinkers from Europe and the United States and the debate between economic liberals, neomercantilists, and Marxists. The wider approach of this volume highlights important contributions made by thinkers from outside Europe and the United States in the pre-1945 era as well as important debates both within each of the three orthodoxies and with perspectives beyond them. In addition to providing a more comprehensive history, this wider approach can help to strengthen efforts to foster more “global conversations” in the field of IPE today, to improve interpretations of contemporary political discourse as well as to contribute to the study of topics that are attracting growing interest within current IPE scholarship.

This chapter substantiates the argument that promoting collective equality as a core rationale of peacemaking is not only utopian, but a realistic goal that corresponds with reducing the likelihood of violent conflict and increasing the potential for durable peace. In the first part of the chapter, the argument that collective equality posits a realistic goal for peacemaking is presented. In the second part, the claim that promoting collective equality should be regarded as an effective peacebuilding strategy is promoted. I base this claim on empirical findings found in the literature, mainly writings on ethnic conflicts, nation-building, and peace. Lastly, the chapter engages with three possible objections related to the relationship between collective equality and power politics.

Classical economic liberalism was the first perspective on political economy to achieve worldwide influence. Its most famous advocate was Adam Smith whose 1776 book The Wealth of Nations became a foundational text for economic liberals that was known around the world by the early twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, some other European political economists consolidated the international dimension of the classical liberal economic perspective by building on Smith’s ideas, including David Ricardo, Richard Cobden, John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot. These and other European classical economic liberals were united in the belief that free trade and free markets would foster global prosperity, international peace, and individual freedom. At the same time, they did not always concur about the precise ways that free trade would generate these benefits or about which of them was most important. They also disagreed about the universal relevance of economic liberalism, their willingness to accept exemptions from free trade, their interest in international specialization and economic integration beyond free trade in goods as well as about the place of force, imperialism, civilizational discourse, and intergovernmental cooperation in the economic liberal project. In short, there were many distinct versions of classical economic liberalism.

Peacemaking practice shows that national minorities are aware of the shortcomings of liberal democracy and human rights to secure their fundamental interests, and when they come to the negotiating table their focal points are not bills of rights, but rather inclusive political institutions. This political inclusivity often involves the use of power-sharing democracy, a political framework that intentionally accommodates competing ethno-national groups within the state’s governing structures. Many experts, nongovernmental organizations, scholars, and policymakers have also recommended power-sharing as the more adequate institutional design for such places. This chapter evaluates democratic power-sharing vis-è-vis the more common model of majoritarian democracy to support the argument that a revision of our taken-for-granted assumptions about what “proper” democracy looks like is needed. To illustrate the general observations, the chapter reviews the use of power-sharing systems in Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland.

The emergence of classical economic liberalism was much more than just a European story. Economic liberal thought found supporters among thinkers from many other parts of the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of whom also adapted it in various ways in response to their local circumstances. This chapter highlights adaptations made by prominent thinkers from the Americas (Thomas Cooper, José da Silva Lisboa, Manuel Pardo y Lavalle, Carlos Calvo, Harold Innis), South Asia (Rammohun Roy, Dadabhai Naoroji), Africa and the Ottoman Empire (Olaudah Equiano, Alexander Crummell, Hassuna D’Ghies), as well as East Asia (Taguchi Ukichi, Yan Fu). The ideas of some of these figures also found an audience in Europe, revealing that liberal ideas flowed not just from Europe to the rest of the world but also in the other direction. Further, some economic liberals outside Europe questioned the European origins of this perspective by claiming its independent roots in their own region. In the Chinese case, the chapter also describes how a contemporary of Adam Smith’s, Chen Hongmou, developed ideas that bore some similarities to European economic liberalism without knowledge of the latter.

“True ambidexterity is about having the people within the organization who have the mindset, skills and maturity to respond positively to different circumstances,” argues Michael Fraccaro, formerly an organizational development leader in HSBC Asia-Pacific. The essence of ambidexterity is about embracing opposites. It is about transcending an either/or view and remaining flexible enough to view challenges from different perspectives.

The year 1865 was a formative one for HSBC, the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. In March it opened for business in Hong Kong, helping to finance trade between Europe and Asia. In April it opened in Shanghai, and in July it was London's turn. The company was born from one simple idea: a local bank serving international needs. Ambidexterity was built in from the start. HSBC has always been committed to developing global managers, flexible enough to adapt to any culture of its 60 plus subsidiaries. Since 1865 HSBC has had a continuous presence in mainland China, albeit sharply curtailed under Japanese rule and the Mao years of the People's Republic. In 1984, as China reopened, HSBC became the first foreign bank to receive a banking licence since 1949.

Now, after decades of growth in China and globally, some are questioning again where the limits of HSBC's ambidexterity lie. In the United Kingdom, it was widely criticized for its public support of the Hong Kong National Security Law in 2020. In 2022 HSBC's largest shareholder, China's Ping An Insurance, made the case for splitting HSBC in two – separating the East from the West. Ping An argued that a split would create shareholder value through better focus on distinct markets and reduced capital requirements. It would also allow individual investors in Hong Kong to receive their valued dividends, without the risk of Bank of England intervention, as had happened during Covid-19. Some commentators saw a political agenda too: a Hong-Kong-listed HSBC Asia might be more amenable to influence from Beijing and the CPC. HSBC managers rejected the case for a split. They argued that HSBC's global connectivity brought greater value. Does HSBC need to choose between China and the West, or is much of its inherent business value based on the ambidextrous linking of the two?

This chapter examines the ideas of neomercantilist thinkers from outside Europe and the United States whose thought became well known in various places during the pre-1945 period. Some of them adapted the ideas of neomercantilist thinkers from Europe and the United States in creative ways, including thinkers from Argentina (Alejandro Bunge), Australia (David Syme), China (Liang Qichao), Ethiopia (Gabrahiwot Baykadagn), India (Mahadev Govind Ranade, Benoy Sarkar), and Turkey (Ziya Gökalp). Others developed distinctive neomercantilist ideas without much, or any, reference to neomercantilist thought from Europe and the United States, including figures from Canada (John Rae), China (Sun Yat-sen, Zheng Guanying), Egypt (Muhammad Ali), Japan (Fukuzawa Yukichi, Ōkubo Toshimichi), and Korea (Yu Kil-chun). This latter group of thinkers reveal how the ideas of Hamilton and List did not play the same kind of central role in the emergence of neomercantilist thought that Smith’s played in the growth of economic liberalism. Taken together, all the thinkers described in this chapter reinforce the point that neomercantilist thought was characterized by considerable diversity.