Ο Άνταμ Σμιθ στο Πεκίνο

by Giovanni Arrighi, Γιώργος Ρακκάς (Introduction), Αλεξάνδρα Λυμπεροπούλου (Translator)

Το βιβλίο αυτό εστιάζει σε δύο εξελίξεις οι οποίες, περισσότερο από οποιαδήποτε άλλη, διαμορφώνουν την παγκόσμια πολιτική, οικονομία και κοινωνία. Η μία είναι η άνοδος και η πτώση του νεοσυντηρητικού Σχεδίου για τον Νέο Αμερικάνικο Αιώνα· η άλλη, η ανάδυση της Κίνας ως ηγέτιδας της οικονομικής αναγέννησης της Ανατολικής Ασίας. Στόχος του βιβλίου είναι, αφενός, να προσφέρει μια ερμηνεία της συνεχιζόμενης μετατόπισης του επικέντρου της παγκόσμιας πολιτικής οικονομίας από τη Βόρεια Αμερική στην Ανατολική Ασία υπό το φως της θεωρίας του Άνταμ Σμιθ για την οικονομική ανάπτυξη και, αφετέρου, μια ερμηνεία του Πλούτου των εθνών υπό το φως αυτής της μετατόπισης.

Σε μια εποχή όπου οι περισσότεροι στοχαστές που προσέγγιζαν κριτικά την παγκοσμιοποίηση και τοποθετούσαν τον εαυτό τους σε διάφορες παραλλαγές της αριστεράς προέβλεπαν ότι η ένταξη της Κίνας στο παγκόσμιο οικονομικό σύστημα θα σημάνει το γονάτισμα και τη ριζική της αποικιοποίηση, ο Αρίγκι θα πρωτοτυπήσει. Θα διακρίνει έγκαιρα ότι η «στροφή προς την Ανατολή» δηλώνει μια πολύ βαθύτερη μεταβολή στην αρχιτεκτονική του παγκόσμιου συστήματος, σηματοδοτεί τη μετατόπιση του παραγωγικού του κέντρου στη Νοτιοανατολική Ασία και συνακόλουθα σαλπίζει την έλευση μιας εποχής όχι μονοπολισμού αλλά πολυπολικότητας.


ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΑ
- Εισαγωγή στην ελληνική έκδοση
- Πρόλογος
- Εισαγωγή
- Ο Άνταμ Σμιθ και η νέα ασιατική εποχή
- Εξετάζοντας την παγκόσμια αναταραχή
- Η ηγεμονία αποδιαρθρώνεται
- Η γενεαλογία της νέας ασιατικής εποχής
- Επίλογος
- Βιβλιογραφία

Genres: History, China, Economics, Nonfiction, Politics, Sociology, Theory

653 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Giovanni Arrighi was Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. His books include The Long Twentieth Century, Adam Smith in Beijing, and, with Beverly Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. His work has appeared in many publications, including New Left Review.

Reviews

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly fascinating. One of the most thought provoking books I've read in the last year or so. This is true even if Arrighi's thesis never really becomes clear and he has to hedge considerably in his conclusions.

The book is at least as much about the US as China. For the bulk of it, Arrighi makes an extremely convincing case that our country is in the midst of its terminal crisis as global capitalist hegemon. Published ten years ago, when the Iraq fiasco was still fairly fresh, its analysis has been well substantiated by the intervening decade. The most pessimistic predictions of the anti-war movement have proven true. Bush's invasion permanently destabilized the Middle East, letting loose a chaos that continues to spiral and threatens to engulf the globe.

On the home front, our foreign policy debacles were one factor leading to the total discrediting of our political class. To the point where, for a large portion of the electorate, a clown like Trump could seem like a more plausible candidate for chief executive than many a professional politician (as a side note, much as I lamented the result of the election last November, with time it seems increasingly clear that Hillary Clinton did indeed deserve to lose; here was someone who not only supported the invasion at the time, but has adamantly refused to learn anything from it, strongly advocating more bombing campaigns in Libya and Syria; it's entirely plausible her foreign policy would have been more disastrous than Trump's).

Everything would then seem to point to a situation ongoing turbulence, both in the capitalist heartland and in peripheral states. The author knows this, but evidently feels the need to offer a more hopeful alternative. This is where China comes in, with its peaceful ascent to the status of economic superpower. Arrighi makes the case that China's rise has not simply been a repudiation of the revolutionary heritage of the People's Republic. Rather, Deng Xiaoping built on and consolidated Mao's achievements. Moreover, China's development does not vindicate the neoliberal school of economics. Arrighi here turns to Adam Smith to help theorize a market-based form of development that is nonetheless non-capitalist.

This is all very interesting, but nonetheless the fit between the two parts of the book is not entirely convincing. China arrives as a kind of deus ex machina. It's not clear how its rise is supposed to offset the chaos unleashed by the decaying imperium of the United States. As indicated by his liberal use of the conditional tense in the epilogue, Arrighi himself is aware of the gaps in his analysis. I think it's to his credit that he doesn't try prematurely to paper them over. The simple fact is that the future is not determined. Nonetheless, Giovanni Arrighi has provided an incredibly helpful framework to make sense of the 21st century as it unfolds.

[Brecht Rogissart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the sequel to the magnificent "Long Twentieth Century" (LTC). It is truly worthy of a must-read sequel in the sense that he progresses both theoretically and empirically in his world history of capitalism following LTC. Empirically, his main focus is now the rise of China as the new possible hegemon from the unravelling US hegemony, while in LTC (from 1994) he was still suggesting that Japan might be the one overtaking from the US. Theoretically, through an innovative reading of Smith, he contextualizes East Asia's economic ascent in a productive comparative framework to European economic growth, thereby putting his earlier theory of cycles of accumulation of LTC in a broader historical framework, and in the meantime defining more sharply European capitalism (but still not entirely convincing!).

The book consists of four parts. The first part is a theoretical part in which he unfolds his reading of Smith, contrasting his theory to Marx and Schumpeter. The second part engages with Brenner's book on global turbulence and his criticisms related to American hegemony. The third part is on the decaying American hegemony, and the fourth part on the rising power of China.

The first part focuses on making a distinction between market-based Smithian growth and capitalist development proper. In the first, a given social framework creates a certain potential for economic growth (through markets), but does not alter the framework itself. Increasing/decreasing that potential is decided by non-economic factors, and is only *realised* through markets. The second kind is market-based development in which that social framework is constantly destroyed and reshaped.

Smith discusses both cases through China as the 'natural' path and Holland as the 'unnatural path'. Both the countries have catched up to their full potential within their institutional environment, but along different paths. China did so through developing a domestic market, starting from agriculture all the way up to foreign trade. Along the way, the internal division of labour expanded and created a lot of wealth.

Holland, on the other hand, did so through foreign trade and manufacturers. In their country, merchants have the upper hand in state affairs because of their monopoly on wealth, and states find it hard to implement the national interest because of it. The nexus between capitalists and state is strong in Holland. This is what makes it different from Chinese development: in Europe, Holland is in the middle of an ongoing battle between capitalists (resulting in overaccumulation and competitive pressures) intermingled with interstate competition (resulting in warfare and necessary merchant and industrial complexes to sustain them). This is how Holland will be caught up by Britain, and thus the social framework is destroyed and reshaped through this 'unnatural path'.

Part 2 is a long and intense engagement with Brenner's analysis of the post WWII economic context. I think I am just a bit over my Brennerite curve-of-interest to be really hyped about this chapter, although I do think it is an honest and powerful engagement with his theory. A first interesting aspect is Arrighi's implementation of Brenner's theory into Arrighi's own longer history of global capitalism, and thus drawing attention to the 1873-1895 crisis as the 19th century version of the 1970s crisis. From this comparison, he also criticises Brenner on certain points, from which I'll mention a few. First, Arrighi highlights that it is important to not only stress 'horizontal' competitive dynamics to explain the crisis, but that capital-labour relations ('vertical') are also part of the story. Unlike Britain, the US cannot rely on India for extracted money and army recruits to fight their imperial wars. Instead, if the US wants to fight in Vietnam, it needs to tax its citizens and send its own sons, meaning imperial warfare asks for a lot of domestic willingness to do so. Inflation, in this context, was the strategy of choosing *not* to resolve the conflict between capital or labour. Second, politics is as important as economics to explain the 1970s crisis, and specifically the danger of US hegemony in that era with Southern states rebelling in new coalitions and anti-imperial action. Also, why did the US build its competitors back up, Japan and Germany? For its need to contain communism! Third, the overwhelming response of US politics and industry against the crisis of overproduction was not to engage in the race to the bottom in production, but to financialise. This process is something that Brenner cannot comprehend in his theory. From this financialisation, some Southern states would prosper while other would lose. The 'winners' were East Asian, who benefited from the redirection of capital, because they won on the commodity markets and could lend their profits to the US. Latin America and Africa were the 'losers', as they did not win on commodities markets and needed to compete with the US for financial support.

The third part focuses on the breakdown of American hegemony. Arrighi argues that the US never really was a hegemon like Britain was. In the British century of peace (1815-1914), British mastery of the world prevented any other state to challenge both Britain or another force (which Britain would support as to keep the balance up). Also, in the globalising economy, territorial states were increasingly 'caged' in a global division of labour that strenghtened their interest in keeping UK-centered dominance. The US tried to do this but had to counteract the SU. Its foreing wars proved that it could not convincingly show that it ruled the game. It needed far more support from its allies, which had different plans sometimes, and it could simply not overwhelm its main enemy.

The fourth part summarizes, then, the 'Smithian' growth of China. State action is central to expanding the social division of labour, huge expansion of education (to deliver cheap engineers), a subordination of capitalist interests to state power, active encouragement of intercapitalist competition to achieve the national interest (rather than the other way around). But, most critically, the formation of a domestic market and improvement of conditions in the rural areas for a grand Chinese market. I think in certain ways, especially the state-capital nexus, using Smith to describe China is convincing. However, I think Chinese development of last 4 decades can easily be subscribed as a "Holland"-path of growth through foreign trade (although not in contrast to what Arrighi would say here). It's also a bit weird to use a Western thinker to describe Eastern developments. Arrighi would probably have grasped Chinese development better by actually reading more Eastern Asian historians.

More interesting is chapter 10, in which he does an in-depth reading of American conservatives' debates on how to relate to China. There are three positions overall. The first one is defended by Kaplan, in which he says that military containment will be needed, just as they did with the SU. On the other side is Kissinger, who says that China will be an economic rival but there is no need to make this military. China will not turn violent and you do not want to put more pressure on world politics. The last position was defended by Pinkerton, who says that the US should try to be what Britain did in the 19th century towards Europe: be distant and outplay changing power dynamics. Support the underdog to counterbalance a rising power, then switch sides. According to Pinkerton, US needs to play this game with the new Asian powers. However, Arrighi thus says that this strategy will fail, precisely because US does not have the power that Britain had back then (besides, Britain also eventually failed to do this indefintely, as it was trying to counterbalance Germany increasingly, it cemented itself in a new power bloc with France and Russia, resulting in WWI).

Overall this is a book to read if you liked LTC. This is also an insightful book to see world system theory applied to US hegemony from an excellent historian, combining economics with politics and imperialism. However, if you want to learn about China, which the title kinda promissed, there's better stuff nowadays.

[lindsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

had a lot of good info, thoughtfully constructed argument, etc. … but i personally didn’t find it very helpful because it just didn’t say anything i haven’t heard before. i really wish part 4 (when the author finally got to the “beijing” part of “adam smith in beijing”) had been 3/4 of the book instead of 1/4!! it was just so brief that it lacked detail and glossed over way too many things too quickly and ended up not providing enough supporting evidence for the book’s thesis, imo.

still giving it 4 stars though cuz so many of the book’s predictions (released in 2007 so presumably written earlier) have played out accurately in my lifetime, especially during Xi’s tenure, indicating that the presented framework has great predicative and explanatory power despite the book itself being kinda all-over-the-place and unevenly written.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really hopeful about the decline of US hegemony/imperialism and the rise of China. My main problem with the book is how it defines capitalism through the lens of Adam Smith and Braudel. Arrighi dismisses Marx and wage-labor as the root of capitalism. He stresses the role of the state in building the market and the historical Chinese state's role in limiting the market and full blown capitalism. I do give credit to Arrighi for being positive about China's growth and partially progressive nature, while other leftists have totally dismissed China without a very deep understanding of the country or culture. However, this still does NOT let Arrighi off the hook for not seeing how far down the road towards capitalism the Chinese state really is. The state may still own the land but the system of selling leases mimics capitalist land ownership. For me the real question is will the current reforms in land tenure lead to greater concentration of wealth as well as lead the way to a total establishment of capitalism. While I disagree with the book, I found it really well-written, fascinating, and deeply hopeful about the world's future.

[Colette · Rating 5 out of 5]

im obsessed with him

[Mladen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arrighi's book "Adam Smith in Beijing" finds its intellectual basis in the World Systems Analysis Theory formed by Immanuel Wallerstein. The book is the third part of a sort off "trilogy", the first two books being "The Long Twentieth Century" and "Chaos and Government in the Modern World System". I haven't read those two yet, unfortunately.
In short, Arrighi explains how the global economy might change in the future, manifesting itself in the transfer of power from the west to the east, geographically speaking. However, in reality, there is a certain level of uncertainty as to what will actually happen.
Adam Smith's name is mentioned in the title because he comments China in the Wealth of Nations. Smith considered the Asian economic model a more "natural" way of market development, with more focus on domestic trade in contrast to the European model which focused more on foreign trade. The same European model was more often prone to imperialist tendencies and exploitation of foreign markets. China was one of its victims in the infamous Opium Wars, which is also indicative of the west favoring military power when trade and diplomacy don't go their way.
This imperialist model was according to Arrighi unknown to the East-Asian states and was further forced on them. He gives a more elaborate and less simplified explanation of this than me. Japan was the first to succumb to the imperial power lust when realizing the possibility of expansion. However, they got knocked off the horse later in the 20th century when the Yanks hit them with the atom bombs. However, I digress, the point of this was to indicate the existence of two economic approaches. Arrighi further explains how these two got intertwined together through history which later leads to the situation we have now in East-Asia, where China is slowly manifesting its will to become the new hegemony replacing potentially the USA.
I've left out much of the "fluff" which cannot be transferred so easily in a simple review but needless to say, Adam Smith in Beijing was definitely a worthwhile read.

[Turkish · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Скоро всей вашей Америке кирдык" - расширенная версия.
На самом деле ну очень глубокое экономико-политическое исследование. Порой слишком глубокое для меня. Слава Богу, что Арриги очень структурировано пишет, иначе многое я бы вообще не понял. Учитывая, что политические работы, которые я доселе читал, как правило, страдали сумбурностью, Арриги прям молодец, захотелось отдельно отметить плюс данной книги. Как в школе: в начале главы цель и гипотеза, аргументы в поддержку, аргументы в опровержение, вывод, закрепили. Из-за этого читать было значительно легче. Учитывая мои пробелы в познании экономики, Арриги постарался максимально донести до меня свои гипотезы. Даже если не всегда понимаешь выкладку полностью, остается дождаться блока с выводами и там хотя бы есть возможность схватить, к чему автор все это вел.
Ну и я, конечно, прекрасно знал, что политика это сверхлицемерная область, где уровень лжи и жестокости зашкаливает, но ребята с Запада, конечно, гении риторики и хитрых многоходовочек. В какой-то момент поймал себя на мысли, с очередной "дружественной интервенции" я горю или лолирую в голосину как они все это разыграли. Ужасно, но, наверно, так и должна вести себя держава, претендующая на мировое господство.

[Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

(1) my notes on The Long Twentieth Century
(2) a random LinkedIn post on "Lessons of the Qing"
(3) thoughts on Adam Smith in Beijing

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Arrighi structures his book around recurring historical waves he terms systemic cycles of accumulation. In his view, there is but one capitalist world-economy, moving through alternating phases of expansion and stagnation. Each cycle crystallizes around a cluster of nodes—ever larger, ever denser with succeeding waves—through which capital accumulates and power concentrates. What we perceive on the surface as the rise and fall of states, nations, or even constellations of nations is, for Arrighi, only the epiphenomenon of this deeper systemic logic.
And although each succeeding wave involves the destruction of older forms of power, there is a simultaneous revival of atavistic tendencies. Arrighi points to tensions between Venetian “state monopoly capitalism” and Genoese “cosmopolitan capitalism” (in Russian-Soviet terminology), or what the Wallonian historian of ancient and medieval times, Henri Pirenne, designated as oscillations between eras of economic freedom and restriction.
To put it plainly: Genoese capitalism was extensive—a mercantile system built on mobile networks, flexible trade routes, and an ever-widening commercial radius. The Genoese merchant-bourgeoisie outsourced territorial and military functions to Iberian nobles, keeping their own hands free for finance and trade. By contrast, Dutch capitalism was intensive: anchored in a highly specialized division of labor, the concentration of value-added manufacture, and the rise of Holland itself as a global entrepôt.
Arrighi makes a subtle, and often overlooked, point: the Dutch entrepôt was the foundation of these characteristics. Their grip on Europe’s drug supply underwrote their monopoly in high-value textile dyeing. Yet in consolidating this position, the Dutch surrendered the flexibility the Genoese had enjoyed—exposing themselves to fragility in the very supply chains that sustained them. Accordingly, Dutch mercantile power rested upon Dutch naval power. It had to “internalize protection costs” that the earlier Genoese had “externalized” to Iberian territorialism.
British capitalism fused these legacies. It revived the Genoese passion for global expansion (hence the cliché of the empire on which the sun never set) and their commercial flexibility, but retained the Dutch commitment to territorial control and colonial monopoly, together with their emphasis on value-added production and entrepôt finance. What Britain shed, however, was the Dutch hyper-specialization and corporate form—traits later resurrected not by Britain (Victorian business characterized by flexible family-owned enterprises), but by the Americans (i.e., vertical integration, the “internalization of transaction costs”, and the managerial revolution).
One might call this the negation of the negation in the Hegelian sense, and at the same time the eternal recurrence of the same in Nietzsche’s. Each systemic cycle cancels and supersedes its predecessor, yet what is cast off returns in altered form, re-inscribed at a higher level of accumulation.
Arrighi’s cyclical theory represents an extrapolation of John Hick’s account of mercantile expansion, and he situates it in the historic tradition of Smith, Ricardo, Marx and Schumpeter.
The Smithian-Hicksian argument can be stated quite simply:
Commercial competition compels the continual reinvestment of profits.
Reinvestment expands the volume of trade.
As trade expands, two pressures mount simultaneously:
• competition for the marginal sale squeezes revenues,
• competition for the marginal purchase squeezes costs.
Profit margins are compressed from both sides.
Since the pace of expansion depends on the marginal profit rate, falling margins slow the rate of growth.
Thus, across the course of a mercantile cycle, competition intensifies, profit rates contract, and the expansion itself eventually stalls.
There are of course countervailing tendencies: the discovery or invention of new inputs and outputs, or the discovery and establishment of new trade routes—diversification and innovation counterbalance the squeeze. Historically, Genoese and British “extensive” regimes thrived on widening trade networks, while Dutch “intensive” capitalism relied on specialization and entrepôt control. In both cases, profits could be maintained by reducing costs and risks through economies of scale.
All material expansions of the capitalist world-economy, therefore, oscillate between two forces: a tendency for reinvested profits to narrow margins and stall growth, and a counter-tendency for innovation and economies (internal or external) to reduce costs and propel expansion further.
For Hicks, these trajectories of growth and stagnation are to be modeled by logistic curves, punctuated by “pauses.” Crucially Arrighi argues following Marx, stagnation comes not from a lack of capital but from too much capital—overaccumulation. Periods of brotherly fraternity between trading centers give way to fratricidal struggles, where one’s survival comes at another’s ruin.
From the “Hundred Years’ War” of the Italian city-states to the world-historic defeat of the Spanish Armada, from the British Navigation Acts to Germany’s failed bid for Atlantic supremacy—and the simultaneous struggle between the United States and Japan to wrest the Pacific from British hands—the same script recurs: cooperation when returns are rising, fratricidal rivalry once they begin to fall.
Arrighi’s novelty, now, is to tie Smith-Hicks to the “financial expansions” of Fernand Braudel, the French historian of the longue durée. Financial expansions signal the exhaustion of a regime of trade-based accumulation. Merchant-financier communities, best positioned to read world market signals, shift from trade to high finance. They “service” both capitalist and non-capitalist actors by channeling liquidity, but rather than stabilizing the system, they often profit from its volatility. Instability, however, is structural, not caused by financiers themselves: each expansion eventually undermines the very organizational structures that sustained it.
Thus, systemic cycles of accumulation alternate between phases of stable material expansion and turbulent phases of financial expansion. Financial expansions recycle capital from exhausted structures into emerging ones, setting the stage for a new regime: surplus capital migrates from declining enterprises to larger, stronger ones, or across regions, restarting accumulation on a new foundation.
Historically, two forms of “concentration of capital” occur in every financial expansion:
Internal concentration within the old regime, producing a short-lived “wonderful moment” of revival, followed by terminal crisis.
External concentration in new organizational forms or regions, which destabilize the old order while laying the groundwork for the next systemic cycle.
It is this second kind of concentration—less visible but more decisive—that drives the long historical sequence of systemic cycles: from Genoese-Iberian, to Dutch, to British, to American. Each cycle rises from the contradictions and collapse of the previous, reconstitutes the world-economy on new foundations, and begins a fresh phase of expansion—until its own contradictions bring it down.
Arrighi formalizes this process by treating systemic cycles as a sequence of overlapping logistic curves. Each logistic traces the trajectory of a material expansion: a rapid A-phase of accelerating returns followed by a B-phase of decelerating returns as the system approaches its carrying capacity (K). When the first curve nears its stagnationary inflection point—the “signal crisis”—a second curve begins its ascent. At this stage, the old regime still dominates, but its internal contradictions have become visible and new organizational forms are beginning to take shape.
The process continues until the first curve plunges into its “terminal crisis,” when profitability and cooperation collapse into destructive competition. At precisely this moment, the second curve reaches its own expansionary inflection point, propelling a new round of accumulation. Mathematically, one might imagine the world-economy as a bundle of partially conjoined logistics: as one trajectory flattens toward its asymptote, another rises from below, offset in time but continuous in the larger process.
The conceptual power of this model lies in its ability to reconcile continuity with discontinuity. Each systemic cycle of accumulation is finite, bounded by the parameters of its organizational structure.
The first point of criticism I would raise is a technical one: Arrighi’s distinction between “internal” and “external” concentration of capital—while illuminating—could have been sharpened with money view thinking and the elementary logic of double-entry book-keeping.
From a balance-sheet perspective, “external concentration” is not an accidental tendency but the structural consequence of stagnation itself. Once the profitability of the incumbent cycle collapses, assets marked to falling revenues cannot sustain their valuations, so capital must flee outward; seeking new enterprises whose realized profits exceed their capital costs. In other words: the reflux of liquidity into rising circuits is baked in as soon as margins contract in the old ones.
This raises the more subtle question of “internal concentration.” Why do certain stagnating systems experience manias—those “wonderful moments” where paper values soar before collapse—while others transition more quietly into crisis? The answer lies in the arithmetic of returns on debt (rᴅ) and returns on equity (rᴇ).
In any capitalist system, rᴇ > rᴅ by necessity.
But when rᴅ in the old cycle exceeds the rᴇ of new enterprises, reflux slows: capital stays bottled in the legacy structure, inflating speculative bubbles.
Conversely, when the rᴇ of the rising sector clearly outpaces the rᴅ burden of the old, reflux accelerates, and surplus liquidity migrates almost automatically into the new regime.
Put differently: whether “internal concentration” manifests as mania depends on the relative slope of rᴅ vs. rᴇ across overlapping curves. If rᴇ in the emergent system is high enough, reflux bleeds off old excess smoothly into new growth. If not, speculative claims multiply within the exhausted structure until collapse is violent.
This framing clarifies something Arrighi gestures at but never formalizes: financial expansions are not autonomous “choices” by merchant-financiers. They are balance-sheet necessities once rᴅ/rᴇ arithmetic turns unfavorable. Financiers simply mediate the migration of liquidity between dying and ascendant systems, profiting from volatility along the way.
A second technical point translates into a political question. The succession of curves generates the illusion of an “endless” process: a higher-order trajectory built out of successive S-shaped sub-cycles, each extinguishing its predecessor while simultaneously giving rise to its successor. What Arrighi leaves unaddressed in The Long Twentieth Century—though he may take it up in Adam Smith in Beijing—is the deeper question: not simply the terminal limits within each historical cycle, but the terminal limits of the sequence of cycles itself.

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✅ Historical fact 1:
19th-century naval and artillery revolutions let Britain annihilate Qing defenses in hours; the “barbarian weapons” made the old military paradigm obsolete before China could adjust.

✅ Contemporary parallel:
In the Caucasus, Turkish drones let Azerbaijan smash Armenian positions built for 20th-century trench/artillery warfare. “Drone blitzkrieg” shows how a side that masters the new paradigm can rout one organized for the previous.

✅ Historical fact 2:
Imperial China’s decentralized politics make it hard to coordinate national industrial and military build-up; Meiji Japan’s centralized state rapidly builds heavy industry and a modern navy/army and overtakes China.

✅ Contemporary parallel:
Military policy is constrained by state spending; Congress holds “the power of the purse”; Congress experiences periodic derangement of increasing severity. China can align credit and planning around long-horizon military tech without those veto points, giving it an edge in absorbing new paradigms.

✅ Historical fact 3:
Military power lets late developers (Prussia, Japan) and weaker parties (France, Austria-Hungary) overcome structural economic disadvantages, rewrite regional hierarchies.

✅ Contemporary parallel:
Russia uses force to amputate and annex the industrial heartland of the Donbas and choke off Ukraine’s integration into European capital and trade, compensating for its own inability to compete inside that system post-Maidan. China, meanwhile, prepares for the possibility of taking Taiwan as a bid to monopolize the chokepoint of the world’s most critical input—advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

✅ Historical fact 4:
War repeatedly re-routes value flows: British and Japanese victories turn Chinese tribute and trade into tributaries for their own financial circuits (indemnities, treaty ports, customs revenues via Indian exports).

✅ Contemporary parallel:
Reconstruction under a Russian Occupation Regime, with Western capital constrained, would be funded by Chinese state-linked credit; turning Ukrainian fixed capital and grain into collateral and throughput for Chinese finance instead of Euro-Atlantic capital.

✅ Historical fact 5:
British gunboat victories and the Opium Wars crack open the Qing tributary system and “globalize” East Asia, but much of the real upside goes to the regional upstart: Meiji Japan, which rides the new order to great-power status.

✅ Contemporary parallel:
Israeli campaigns that degrade Arab and Iranian power may, over time, create space not just for Israel but for Turkish “neo-Ottoman” ambitions.

✅ Historical fact 6:
The “liberal” 19th-century trade order in Asia is the projection of British (and later Japanese) power.

✅ Contemporary parallel:
Maoist China stands outside the U.S.-centered order as a command economy; post-WTO China becomes a loud defender of liberal world trade, because its export-driven rise and growing financial clout now rest on those rules.

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The book is a pretty good account of the rise of China. A few limitations:

1. Missed Opportunity: Connecting China’s Rise to the Argument of The Long Twentieth Century

One of the more frustrating aspects of the book is that it never fully explores the very dynamic the author himself gestures toward at the end of the prequel—namely, the East Asian industrialization sequence and China’s position as its ultimate beneficiary. He briefly notes the historical chain of surplus-capital diffusion—from Japan to the NICs (South Korea and Taiwan), to Southeast Asia, and finally to China—but never follows through on tracing how this process materially conditioned China’s rise.

Yet this is precisely where the story becomes most interesting. China was, in theory, the most “vulnerable” economy in this diffusion cycle: as the last major recipient of inward investment, it should have been at high risk of becoming trapped at the bottom of the supply chain, relegated to labor-intensive, easily offshored industries. Countries in this position typically face early deindustrialization and limited technological upgrading.

To the author’s credit, the book explains quite well why China avoided this fate—through state-guided industrial policy, massive market size, capital controls and technology diffusion, and a highly educated, disciplined work force. But he never reconnects this analysis to the framework of The Long Twentieth Century, where he had earlier hinted that capital-importing nations could transform themselves into capital exporters by deliberately offloading their most labor-intensive production phases to even cheaper economies. China managed this transition more successfully than any country before it, and did so on a scale unprecedented in the history of capitalism.

What’s missing, then, is the explicit narrative bridge: how China took the structural role predicted in the earlier book but strategically altered its trajectory to avoid the usual dependency trap and the deindustrialization and Planet of Slums-ization that happened in countries like the PH. Without this link, the argument feels incomplete and somewhat disconnected from the conceptual architecture he built in his foundational work.

2. Geopolitical Ambiguity: China, Japan, Taiwan, and the Struggle for Regional Centrality

The author also sidesteps a crucial strategic question: whether China can establish itself as the gravitational center of the Asia-Pacific order—particularly relative to Japan—without forcibly incorporating Taiwan.

This omission is even more striking today, in an era where semiconductor supply chains dominate public debate and Taiwan’s position as a technological chokepoint shapes global security thinking. In the “Age of Silicon,” control of advanced manufacturing capacity is not merely an economic advantage; it is a fulcrum of planetary domination. Any account of China’s future regional role that does not grapple with this reality feels incomplete.

Historically, East Asia’s hierarchy was defined by a tributary structure in which Japan’s Meiji-era rise represented a dramatic reversal. Whether China can now reverse that reversal—drawing Japan back into a China-centered order—depends on far more than cultural prestige or economic gravitational pull. It hinges on technological dependencies and the credibility of US-Japan military deterrence.

The book never really addresses the tension between China’s ambitions and Japan’s strategic anxieties. Nor does it examine how Taiwan functions as both a symbolic and material hinge: the unresolved legacy of the Chinese civil war and materially, the location of the production for the world's most important commodity.

A clearer analysis would ask:

Can China become the regional hegemon without Taiwan?

How does Japan perceive that possibility?

What does semiconductor dependence imply for future Sino-Japanese relations?

3. Overconfidence and Ideological Drift: The Book’s Weakest Section

The book’s concluding geopolitical forecast is arguably its weakest and most dated component. The author’s optimism—especially his dismissive tone toward Mearsheimer—reflects the intellectual climate of the early 2000s, but now reads as naive. His lefty anti-American framing leads him to understate the importance of military power in state behavior...

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

not the China explainer I was expecting or hoping for. more accurate title might be 'Decolonising Brenner', given how much time and apparatus is expended in subsuming Brenner's long downturn hypothesis into Arrighi's structural cycles of accumulation, a longue-durée framework whereby successive capitalist regimes - Venice, Genoa, Holland, Britain, the United States - become hegemonic powers, structure themselves in such a way that the contradictions which undid their predecessors are resolved, but with the result that new ones progressively exhaust their own capacity.

At the end of the Long Twentieth Century, the book in which Arrighi lays all this out in the most amount of detail, he cites Japan as the most likely successor to the US, but at some stage between that book and this one China obviously presented itself as the more plausible inheritor, which remains the case up to the present.

Robert Brenner says you get capitalism once labour is ‘free’, once it appears on the market as a commodity. This is distinct from all previous modes of production because when you can cheapen subsistence goods you can have unprecedented — though not continuous or unlimited — increases in productivity and overcome the age-old barrier to economic development represented by declining productivity in food production, to which medieval and early modern economies were periodically subject. The burden of Brenner’s argument falls on England, where free labour was the norm due to the large consolidated holdings on which the agricultural revolution in grain depended. Productive regimes elsewhere e.g. France, were characterised by petty forms of property, as well as heavy state levies on surplus, which were not re-invested into production but expended on luxury consumption or warfare. By suppressing the purchasing power of rural producers, the emergence of any mass market for urban manufacturing was stifled; there was little pressure for productive investment in urban industry and only weak tendencies towards the commercialisation of agriculture.

In its abstract form the distinction Brenner draws here is not a synthetic one between internal and external markets — though when applied to actual historical instances, it can very easily go that way — rather it attempts to clarify the switch, the moment when markets become the required means of surviving and reproducing as a class. This is no longer choice. This is the first time that, in order to continue to exist tenant farmers, faced with higher than average costs from backward production methods, have to specialise and provide for enclosure or farm buildings to prevent falling back on their rent. This is the first time a ruling class has to act according to the maximisation of surplus and the development of productive force. Its agency is no longer a factor, its brain has been switched out with competition.

Historians, economists, Marxists such as Arrighi, Wallerstein, Banaji, Frank — hereafter referred to by the blunt shorthand of World-Systems Theorists (WSTs) — are open to seeing capitalism arising out of the commercial networks beginning in the Italian city states / north-western Europe in early modernity, to incorporate the Mediterranean, the slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa and plantations in the Americas. According to some WSTs, any part of this interdependent system of exchange is capitalist, whatever its means of controlling and rewarding labourers; free labour is just one aspect, wage labour is not specifically capitalist, rather the self-expansion of capital is. This is a quantitative rather than a qualitative model. Looking to WST to isolate causes or restricted timeframes is misconceived because the real transition is not feudalism to capitalism as such but how anarchic medieval systems of power, coalesced to into concentrated capitalist power, how these uniquely* fused in Europe, facilitating territorial conquest and the creation of a world-economy. The history of capitalism (The Venetians -> the Dutch -> the English -> the Americans) is the formation of political structures endowed with more extensive and complex organisational capabilities than those previous. Relations of production as a whole moves us beyond Brenner’s short-circuit within the single separable unit, in which labour subject to any form of coercion is de facto feudal, and a world system containing it de facto pre-capitalist.

There is plenty of material in Marx’s works which supports Brenner’s labour-power exceptionalism, but it is fair to say that Marx is trying to make a specific argument about the mechanics of a pure or abstracted capitalism, and how it figures in an industrialised form in early to mid-nineteenth century England; this is the milieu in which the vast majority of his non-literary sources are dealing. Brenner is very invested in justifying his transition hypothesis relative to Marx, but I think we shouldn’t be too worried about litigating ourselves relative to him all the time; the way capitalism continues to develop will continue to shape our understanding of the historical documents. WST comes out of a moment in which the most advanced anti-capitalist struggles were taking place in Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia. The fact that Marx’s arguments about convergence in the global economy did not stand up to the uneven, contradictory and coercive features of capitalism in these places required answers. Similarly, Brenner’s resurgent Eurocentrism corresponds in time to the relative eclipse of these struggles in the west and the ascent of a form of capitalism characterised by greater mobility or autonomy from state control. I think the rise of China, the genocide in Gaza, climate change, all point to capitalism’s more overtly political character since the GFC and have contributed to how the history of neoliberalism is being written (see: Slobodian). I would predict that over the coming years capitalist historiography will continue to bring greater degrees of attention to the history of market engineering and ruling class agency. This is all to say that, rightly or wrongly, we* are far more used to seeing capitalism in parasitic, destructive and conservative rather than improving terms; I think of sections of Capital which describe how in some branches of industry wages fall below the value of labour-power, dis-incentivising the adoption of machinery.

Anyway, Brenner argues neither specialisation of labour nor accumulation of wealth arising out of trade can account for the rise of a system characterised by a compulsion to revolutionise technical processes of labour and social composition. Profit arising out of exchange only has force when labour has been separated from ownership over the means of production and labourers have been emancipated from slavery or serfdom. In support of this Brenner argues that certain methods of agricultural improvement such as convertible husbandry, or certain forms of rotation, would have elevated output were they introduced when they were first developed in the medieval epoch. However in order to apply these new methods the lord would have had to increase their outlay on manorial supervision or find some means of rewarding the serf to a particular standard. Since labour applied to the lord’s demesne constituted a direct forcible deduction from what was applicable to the peasants’ plot, no such incentive existed and it made more sense to squeeze tenants. Feudalism therefore hindered the development of commercialised agriculture, as squeezing exhausted the soil, fuelling cyclical demographic crises. When new methods of cultivation became widespread in late sixteenth / early seventeenth century England, it was on the basis of a partnership between landlords and richer peasants. In other words, the lords were only increasing their income by relative surplus labour when they were no longer serf lords.

Underdevelopment was one way WST sought to understand why capitalism’s peripheral satellites — what we now to a large extent refer to as the Global South — were forced into becoming export-dependent cash crop economies, the economic surplus expropriated to facilitate the concentration of greater levels of skill and capitalisation in the core. Brenner’s explanation is that it is only in certain countries that labour power can become a commodity and what happened in the Carribean or Latin America ensured there was nothing that could be done to more profitably stimulate investment or productive capacity.

There is a hydraulic character to these arguments.When Brenner challenges Wallerstein’s description of serfdom declining due to changing land-labour ratios putting serfs in a better bargaining position, Brenner says bargaining assumes serfs have already gained their freedom. I think this is indicative of the way Brenner is after formal definitions and would exclude any conception of bargaining-towards-freedom, seeing this as a process rather than something that can only happen when its accomplished. Capitalists could improve because they had to and it is their impulse towards improvement that makes them capitalists. Serfdom is the absence of bargaining; it can’t be serfdom if there is bargaining. Capitalism’s rise cannot be attribute to ‘money’, ‘trade’, ‘the production of commodities’ or ‘merchant capital’ as these all depend on a class structure which precedes them. Under this functionalist model it is impossible to see the emergence of different but equally capitalist systems of labour control, or understand its constructed or agentic character. I hope at this stage it’s clear that Brenner’s model is not one that can accommodate dialectics, we know that as soon as he insists on the closed character of national economies, particularly in an early modern period. Not seeing social processes in motion in general is like talking to someone from the moon for me, whenever I read Althusser I feel like I’m hearing someone talk through a wall, but the idea that concentration of land in England has nothing to do with the expropriation of Ireland in the context of the Plantations is dead wrong, dead dead wrong.

[Shreya U.K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most brilliant and absolutely brutal books i have ever read. understood so little and cannot wait to come back again and again and again.

[Brandon Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most ambitious works of world economic history I've ever read. Arrighi engages deeply with a huge variety of economists, political scientists, sociologists, IR theorists, and other thinkers - Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Brenner, David Harvey, John Mearshimer, Charles Tilly, Fernand Braudel, Kaoru Sugihara, to name just a few; and the influence of Andre Gunder Frank is everywhere even if largely unmentioned - in fleshing out his argument (developing on his previous work in The Long Twentieth Century and elsewhere) that U.S. hegemony is in the midst of a terminal crisis, China is positioned to become the new center of the world economy, and that new world economy may be market-based but noncapitalist thanks to China's unique historical trajectory. Drawing on an unorthodox reading of The Wealth of Nations, Arrighi argues that China's rise is a vindication of Smith, who was not the proponent of unfettered capitalism that most assume him to be, and *not* in the "neoliberalism with Chinese tendencies" sense. There's a ton to chew on and engage with here; perhaps most problematic is Arrighi's glossing over of the deep inequalities and injustices inherent in modern China. Whatever its flaws, though, this is a book worthy of deep and sober debate, which unfortunately it will not receive outside of very specific intellectual circles.

[Ramzey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Giovanni Arrighi & Wallerstein is wrong about their world system theory.
It's neo-smithian and confusing the generic concept of market economy with capitalism.
It's better to read Robert Brenner or Ellen Meinkens wood critque of world system theory..

This book confuses markets/trade/commercial/circulation relations with the social relations of capitalist production.


The view that the global division of labor of labour trough the expansion of the world market determines the rise of capitalism and development/underdevelopment on a global scale is wrong.

It's more correct to say particular class relations that emerge out of class struggles explain the rise of capitalism and the course of economic devlopment. By prioritizing the global division of labor by market/trade relations" world-system analysis fails to under the distinctive class relations in capitalism, that is the existence of "free labor" in the double sense of free to enter into contracts that freed from ownership of any means of production) as opposed to "forced labor" such as in serfdom or slavery.

The rise of trade is not as the origin of a dynamic devlopment because trade cannot determine the transformation of class relations of production.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinarily novel insights into the emerging 21st century through the lens and vision of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Seems to well exemplify the 1990s Russian joke: Marx told the truth about capitalism but lied about communism. I doubt that many conservatives will like or understand the way the author sees China as the best current exemplar of Adam Smith and more likely to be economically competitive as a result. I am not sure I fully accept this analysis but it is a strong wake up call to the USA to become economically more competitive, get rid of its debt mountain, learn to save, grow its manufacturing base on a hi tech competitive basis, reform its education system back to hard science, math and engineering and all those absolutely unlikely actions that conservatives are sleep walking away from and liberals probably don't get. A great read if you want your existing paradigms challenged and set down in new places. But don't bother to read it if your mind is cast in stone, you are data averse, and paradigm locked in.

[Doni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cleanly written, engaging, and up-to-date. Much better than The Great Divergence. Includes how the U.S. shot itself in the foot in regards to China by engaging in the Iraq War. Had we maintained our alliances that we established with the invasion of Afghanistan, it would have been a similar power dynamic to Prussia. But we overextended ourselves and now China is ready for its peaceful assent. It will be interesting to see how such a populous country is able to increase its standard of living when the U.S. standard of living already requires exploitation of many other third world countries. Are China and the endless accumulation of capital required by the capitalist world system compatible?

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es un intento de entender el fenómeno del desarrollo chino, hasta qué punto el socialismo con características chinas tiene raíces en Occidente, la influencia de Marx. Sirve para tener elementos acerca de si el desarrollo de China y de Oriente en general dependerá de Occidente y si China superará a USA en un futuro cercano y el tipo de desarrollo y de organización política de china será copiado en Occidente y si la democracia y el capitalismo occidental, en último término serán superados por gobiernos de tipo meritocratico como el Chino

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arrighi's book is an illuminating exploration of the rise of China as the new hegemonic state in global politics. His arguments are well-researched and supported, and he utilizes theory in such a way that it isn't boring or repetitive, which makes it a relatively easy read. I really learned a lot about Adam Smith's theories too, which is a surprise. Spoiler alert: China is poised to kick the U.S.'s ass very soon, if it hasn't already.

[Nic Paget-Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, which along with "The Long Twentieth Century" brilliantly explains the development of capitalism from the days of Genoa, Venice, the Iberian peninsula and the Spanish empire through the Dutch empire and the British empire, to today and the global reach of the U.S. The inter-connections of many wars, treaties, and other historical events are explained in great detail. This books includes discussion of the history and the now of China.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like most of Arrighi's work, this book isn't an easy read, but the payoff is huge. Whether or not you agree with his assessment of China's development politics, I'd recommend this book just for the way it lays out, in full world-historical detail, the decline of American economic and political power on the globe.

[Jaime McCauley]

It's deep, but not the easiest read. I really appreciate the theoretical comparison between Adam Smith, best known as the founder of capitalism, and Karl Marx, best known for critiquing capitalism. Only a hundred pages or so in, give me time to digest...

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

3/13 chapters are actually about the role of china and adam smith in beijing lol. those chapters are neat! extremely outdated but very fun! the rest of it is about the fall of us empire and very dense sometimes unpleasantly so.

[Harry Liuson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it quite a lot, but it didn't blow me away. It builds on his framework of systemic cycles of accumulation which is outline in more detail in the Long Twentieth Century. In short, the long history of capitalism thus far has been a series of economic expansions spearheaded by one nation followed by financial expansion as the expansion reaches its limit and capital withdraws from productive activity. That capital then ends up going to the next capitalist hegemon, which is invariably a larger, more powerful nation capable of creating a larger economic space for expansion. The sequence goes Iberian-Genoese, United Provinces (Dutch), United Kingdom, United States.

He also introduces (or re-introduces I guess) the notion of Smithian "natural" economic development, where the national economy naturally expands to its limits given political/material/geographic constraints, with the primary basis on agriculture, then industry, then foreign trade.

Arrighi makes a convincing case that US hegemony (legitimacy as world leader, as well as economic and military power) is collapsing. Reading this in 2024, it seems that he was right.

He identifies the signal crisis of US hegemony (as the world reached the limits of postwar growth and Japan + Germany caught up to the US) as the Vietnam War + the neoliberal counterrevolution, which signaled the transition towards the financialization of the US economy due to withdrawal from production. The terminal crisis he identifies as the Iraq war, with increasingly few US client states willing to fund its military adventurism.

Amidst all this, the global center of the world economy has transitioned to East Asia. Arrighi identifies in China the possibility of the reconstitution of the world economy on non-capitalist terms. He conjectures that such a world would also be a much more peaceful and equitable one than a capitalist world-economy. This horizon is based on the dynamics of China's ascent as well as the historical "Five Hundred Years Peace" under the Ming and Qing dynasties. Capitalism is extremely extroverted in orientation, seeking constant expansion to new markets and territories in order to resolve crises of profitability. However, China during the Ming and Qing dynasties has relied very little on international trade and colonial expansion (barring the Qing dynasty conquests, which Arrighi reads as mostly military rather than economic in nature). Back to the modern day, he identifies the rise of modern China as being largely due to the strength of its domestic economy rather than an export focus. Town-Village Enterprises were essential in expanding the size of the domestic market and improving the economic and social conditions of rural China. Note that "non-capitalist" doesn't mean socialist, or necessarily even egalitarian, although the conditions of China's economic ascent were heavily tied to the legacy of the Mao era.

In fairness, this book was written in 2008, but even so, I think his discussion of the ascent of modern China was too brief and one of the weaker aspects of the book. I've spent a disproportionate amount of this review talking about China, but it was really like a quarter of the book. With the benefit of the passage of 15 extra years of time, I think that many of Arrighi's predictions have been vindicated. East Asia remains (generally) peaceful, certainly compared to the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Palestine. The communist party has reined in the power of capital and is spearheading a global green energy transition. However, I think the jury is still out on what kind of world order will emerge from the dust of US hegemony.

[Gonzalo Darrigrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro de Giovanni Arrighi es una excelente introducción a sus obras maestras como son la historia del largo siglo XX y Caos y orden en el sistema mundo moderno, o funciona como complemento de la obra en su conjunto.

Arrighi considera que, del mismo modo en que Marx y el marxismo comprendieron la lógica del desarrollo capitalista occidental, Adam Smith fue quien en el siglo XVIII supo entender la lógica del desarrollo chino basado en una economía de mercado. Adam Smith en Pekín es un libro escrito en la larga duración que se acomoda muy bien a los estudios de coyuntura, tanto es así que este libro publicado muy poco tiempo antes de fallecer su autor un 2009, es capaz de explicar cuál es la lógica que existe detrás del asesinato del general iraní Qasem Soleimani ordenado por Donald Trump en 2020. Es que, entiende Arrighi, en medio oriente se juega el nuevo juego de la guerra fría, ya no contra Rusia sino para contener el avance chino.

Más allá de esta nota de actualidad, el libro ofrece una explicación, muchas veces polémica, sobre el declive del poder imperial norteamericano y el ascenso del gigante chino. Si el imperialismo norteamericano es el último relevo de una historia de conquistas coloniales que se iniciaron con los genoveses y continuaron luego con los holandeses y británicos, el nuevo imperialismo chino es un producto de la historia económica y cultural que se inicia en los siglos XV y XVI que se reactualiza luego de las reformas de Deng. Pero mientras que el capitalismo occidental actúa bajo la lógica de la acumulación por desposesión, China ha seguido un desarrollo que Smith comprendió como acumulación por reposición o “vía natural de desarrollo”.

Para el autor, el desarrollo chino se caracterizó por no seguir la vía capitalista de desarrollo, como fue la que adoptó Occidente y evitar, sobre todo, abrazar las medidas del Consenso de Washington que hundieron a las economías del Tercer Mundo. La particularidad del desarrollo chino está dada porque la revolución que encabezó Mao tuvo una base agraria y no urbana e industrial como la revolución rusa, sobre todo, en la etapa en que Stalin lideró el proceso soviético. La base campesina y agraria de la revolución maoísta es la que conecta con las ideas de Adam Smith sobre el desarrollo “natural” de una economía de mercado no capitalista, que luego se complementa con un Estado central fuerte y con políticas de crecimiento que evitan la acumulación por desposesión. Así y todo, Arrighi considera que, en los últimos años, lo que caracteriza al desarrollo incipiente de China es la tensión permanente de crecer con base en la desposesión o con base en la reposición original de los bienes comunes (privatización vs. colectivización).

[Mendys · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Far from being a latecomer to capitalism, China represents the revival of a non-capitalist market society—one that is more harmonious with Adam Smith’s original ideals than modern Western economies."

Pak Yustinus recommended this book in my economic philosophy class at Utan Kayu. I only need 4days to finish it. Lately, I’ve been curious about how the Chinese government navigates “communism,” as they don’t fully embrace traditional communism. This book answered my questions.

Like we know, Adam Smith Theory envisioned a moral, decentralized, and cooperative market economy that contrasts with how capitalism evolved in the West — more exploitative and state-driven than Smith imagined. But, china suprisingly might better realize Smith’s original vision than the Western world. Arrighi argues that the 21st century may belong to China. Like we know lately, Safely to say yes.

Arrighi emphasizes China’s unique development model: market-driven but state-coordinated, with long-term planning and an emphasis on stability.

Arrighi does not idealize China or assume its path is free of contradictions. He acknowledges social inequalities, environmental strains, and political tensions within the Chinese model.

The ongoing U.S.–China trade conflict is typically framed in mainstream discourse as a competition between two economic superpowers vying for market share, technological advantage, and strategic leverage. However, Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing invites us to understand this conflict through a broader and deeper lens: not merely as a trade dispute, but as a systemic confrontation between two fundamentally different paths of political-economic development.

I recommend this book for students, policymakers, business strategists, and general readers who seek a critical historical perspective on why China’s rise matters and how it differs from the West.

We may need to revisit Adam Smith theory and learn from historical cycles and shifts in economic hegemony, and viewing China from a new perspective that acknowledges their “state capitalism” (thanks to Mr.Deng Xiaoping) ✨

[Al Maki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a slow reader and I tend to read several books at once, but I keep at them. I chewed on this from early February till late June having spent a similar length of time on the earlier "The Long Twentieth Century." Was it worth it? Most definitely. Arrighi puts forward an account of the rise of Western Europe to world domination based on a series of escalating arrangements between big money and state military power up to the present when that domination may have overshot its limits. This is not an original idea and Arrighi and the others of his school give credit to Fernand Braudel for its first articulation in the west. I've sometimes tended to dismiss it as a half-baked conspiracy theory. But Arrighi makes a good case by developing a detailed explication of the mechanism, drawing on the histories of Genoa, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, the US and China. He contrasts the Western and Eastern methods of economic development and argues that the process that's been going on in eastern Asia since the Viet Nam war has a different set of ideas behind it and may lead to a world order quite different than the current one. His argument is careful, it's comprehensible and it's comprehensive. In fact it's excellent. If you want a good overview of the current world order and are willing to spend a few months getting it, it's for you.

[Adin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The world, as it turns out, cannot afford two countries [with a large population] behaving like the United States. It lacks the atmosphere … and it also may lack the resources.” Bill McKibben calls this a “tragedy” because

China is actually accomplishing some measurable good with its growth. People are enjoying some meat, sending their [children] to school, heating their huts. Whereas we’re burning nine times as much energy per capita so that we can: air-condition game rooms and mow half-acre lots, drive SUVs on every errand, eat tomatoes flown in from Chile.… Which is why it seems intuitively obvious when you’re in China that the goal of the twenty-first century must somehow be to simultaneously develop the economies of the poorest parts of the world and undevelop those of the rich … with us using less energy so that they can use more, and eating less meat so that they can eat more.… But try to imagine the political possibilities in America… of acknowledging that there isn’t room for two of us to behave in this way, and that we don’t own the rights to our lifestyle simply because we got there first. The current president’s father [George Bush Senior] announced, on his way to the parley in Rio that gave rise to the Kyoto treaty, that “the American way of life is not up for negotiation.” That’s what defines a tragedy.

[Ibrahim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very prescient book; predicted the decline in american hegemony and the possible actions the US empire was likely to take in response and sharply assessed the rise of China in ushering in w potential multi polar world. Rightfully so the book also ends with a reminder that the development of the global south cannot take the form of the first world - unfortunately it seems like that development has more or less taken up that form and we are burning the world asunder as the result.

While arriighi posits the failiure in iraq as the turning point, i think the bigger turning point in american decline and chinese rise is the response to the clinate crisis and the adoption of green technologies. The chinese have monopolized the production almost all aspects of green technologies- and that more than anything might be the final death knell for us hegemony.

The argument that chinese development is not capitalist as it comprises accumulation without dispossession and state regulation of capitalists is interesting- not completely sold on it but Arrighi neatly lays out the distinctions to western capitalist development.

[Brandon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Arrighi longs for an Eastern alternative to western-led global capitalism, and his old candidate, Japan, now less trendy, he turns his eyes toward Red China. His analysis suffers from the typical myopia of the world-systems school, while he does everything he can to jam modern China into his dubious "noncapitalist market economy" model. In the process, he misses much of what is actually noteworthy about post-Maoist and post-Reform China's internal economic and social dynamics. It's impossible not to roll one's eyes at his sheer faith in China's ideological commitment to the Global South, the author missing along the way many of the curious (sometimes quite capitalist) contradictions of China's ongoing crisis of overproduction, increasing overseas investments, and internal exploitation of colonized lands' resources and rural populations' labor. European historians will take issue with his European history, and Sinologists with his Chinese history. "I want to believe," as the X-Files mantra goes, but this is a tome that only strains more credulity the more time passes.

[xiaobao · Rating 5 out of 5]

1 Adam Smith takes market as an instrument by states to encourage capital competition & production boost & overall welfare. It must be self-focus rather than expansion.

2 Capitalism is not Smith. Being captured by rich, capitalist state was an instrument to serve for accumulation by military conquering, as well as capital intensive industrialization.

3 Its hegemony was sustained by excluding majority population from standard production and consumption level. So it couldn’t survive after militarism reached inferior return globally.

4 Financialization comes to the final stage, begging capital profits via self debt and speculation frenzy, every capitalist did the same.

5 China’s market tradition suffered inferior military in late Qing. While the end of capitalist military-driven expansion is now seeing its back.

6 Focusing on human efficiency and overall welfare, rather than capital and resources, China’s model will save humanity from wealth disparity and environmental crisis.

[Qing Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book on my comp reading list that I read after my chair suddendly passed away. I should read it eailer. Very sorry for the self-abandonment in last month. Now it marks a new start, while I am not sure how it will go. Although this book is even better than some I finished during September, my feeling during the reading process is not like that before professor died. The lucky thing is that my new Chair is actually super helpful (even sometimes he does not reply very quick). Feeling meeting on last Friday will bring some changes.....I also did not expect that I would be so interested in Economical Sociology, Political Sociology and Historical Sociology before I came to the PhD program, and I finally understand why I had certain feelings in the past two years when I was attending some courses in other areas.

[Niccolò Malatesta · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent theoretical attempt to rehabilitate Adam Smith and rescue the free market and classical liberalism from the dumpster fire called capitalism. My main takeaways are the two key distinctions: (I) industrial vs. industrious revolution, and (II) mobile vs fixed capital. The analysis of China's "own" path to economic development is also particularly interesting, although it would now benefit from an update in light of recent political developments.

The only two downsides I would mention are:
-The very long section on the U.S. economy and geopolitical strategy felt somewhat weaker and slightly off-topic.
-I also couldn't help feeling that the essay adopts a distinctly Western perspective on China. That is not inherently a flaw, but it is still worth acknowledging.

Would definitely recommend this book to IR enthusiasts and shout-out to Hegel in the bibliography!