The Global Political Sociology of U.S.-China Rivalry
With Ho-fung Hung (Johns Hopkins University)
Discussant: Gregory Chin (Politics, York University)
The recent rivalry between the US and China is more about the shifting balance of economic forces in global capitalism than about ideological differences. Since the 1990s, Wall Street and US TNCs have integrated Chinese firms into their global financial circuits and supply chains. Their lobbying fostered a US-China policy that advanced economic engagement despite the deep, post-1989 ideological rift between the two countries. After about 2010, the China boom faltered. The Chinese state became ever more aggressive in squeezing US and other foreign capital within China’s sphere of influence to facilitate China’s capital export. This unleashed an inter-capitalist competition that underlined the intensifying US-China geopolitical rivalry comparable to the UK-Germany rivalry a century earlier.
Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy in the Department of Sociology and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Protest with Chinese Characteristics (Columbia, 2011), The China Boom (Columbia, 2015), City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule (Cambridge, 2022) and Clash of Empires: From “Chimerica” to the “New Cold War” (Cambridge, 2022). His academic publications have been translated into at least 11 different languages. His analysis of the global and Chinese politics and economy have been cited or featured in major media outlets around the world.
This event is hosted by the Hong Kong Studies Group at the York Centre for Asian Research and co-sponsored by York University Department of Politics.
For more information about the Hong Kong Studies Group, click this link.
