B&R and the New Order Of the World System
By Shengsheng Wang
Tsinghua University
Four Main Points
• the World Capitalist System
• New contradictions and New Trends of the World
Capitalist System
• The Historical orientation of the B&R
• The Parallel System with the growth pole of China
World Capitalist System
• Paul Baran asked in The Political Economy of Growth （1957）：
The question that immediately arises is, why is it that in the
backward capitalist countries there has been no advance along
the lines of capitalist development that are familiar from the
history of other capitalist countries, and why is it that forward
movement there has been either slow or altogether absent?
The structure of the world system
• Samir Amin: the theory of dependency
• Core vs periphery
• Inequality of international trade, exploitation
• Immanuel Wallerstein: the theory of world system
• Core, semi-periphery and periphery
• The forming and changing process of the world capitalist system
The systemic cycles of capitalist accumulation
• Giovanni Arrighi（1978、1994、2007）:
• from the view of capital accumulation to understand the cycles of
world system.
• The history of capitalism accumulation (Genoa,Holland,Britain,US)
shows that the systemic cycle of accumulation includes two stages, i.e.
the stage of material expansion and the stage of financial expansion.
• In the second stage the deepening crises cause the end of the old cycle
of accumulation.
IT revolution and the recent changes of the
world system
• The financialization
• The globalization
• The new imperialism
• The stage of financial expansion in the core zone and the
stage of material expansion in the periphery zone.
Globalization: new stage of the world system
• William I. Robinson（2004、2010）:
• In this stage, the capital supremacy become globalization.
• More serious crises: overproduction, great gap between poor
and rich, ecological crisis and so on
Meanwhile: the new imperialism
• David Harvey（2003）:
• The world system moves towards to the stage of new imperialism.
The globalization is nothing but the recent variety of imperialism.
• US becomes the guardian for the transnational capitals.
• The monopoly of the global financial markets becomes a more
and more important way to maintain domination and exploitation
for the transnational capitals.
global crisis since 2008
• the outlet of the capitalist contradictions
• overaccumulation : the global overproduction and ponzi
accumulation of financial capital
• no way to solve these problems with ordinary policy
instruments
International conflicts or even wars?
• Given this background, the practical solution to the crisis
lies on the structural change and turbulence, which
means transferring the crisis from the core to the
peripheral countries.
The future of world system
• Wallerstein (2011): a more democratic and more equal world system.
• William Robinson(2013) : the world democratic socialist system
• David Harvey(2011) : the world communist system .
• Wang Xiangsui(2014) :the process of globalization will step into a
decline stage; from core-periphery structure to network structure
The Historical Orientation of B&R
• to move from periphery to core in the world capitalist system
• to adapt to and lead the New Normal of China’s economy
• to surpass the systemic cycles of capitalist accumulation
the parallel system with the growth pole of China
• Is there an irreversible tendency of industry hollowing out in
the developed countries? Will the strategy of
reindustrialization work?
• Will China carry forward the socialist principles ,especially to
regulate and reform the private capitals?
Thanks for your time！
The way to core: anti-containment against US
• Ralph Cossa and Brad Glosser-man of CSIS（2015）: B&R would
change the power structure of the Asia-Pacific region and the
Eurasian.
• James Holmes（2015）:china plans to construct a parallel
system in Eurasian to against the system led by US.
• Kevin Gallagher（2015）, Shannon TiZZi（2015）: OBOR is the
China’s Marshall plan.
• Wangzheng（2015）: B&R is the response to America’s AsiaPacific Rebalance Strategy, it’s China’s Asia Rebalance Strategy.
To adapt to and lead the New Normal
• Tyler Durden（2015）:B&R is designed to solve the
overproduction and to accelerate the internationalization of RMB.
• Flynt Leverett（2015）and Hillary Mann（2015）: B&R is
designed to balance the regional economy, to narrow the gap
between the east and the west areas in China.
B&R: surpass the world capitalist system
• How to solve the global problems such as
overproduction the income gap and so on.
• Not the move from periphery to core based on the
old structure of the world system
B&R(OBOR): the Silk Road Economic Belt and the
21st-Century Maritime Silk Road