Varieties of the Regulatory State and Global Companies: The Case of China

Understanding what kind of regulatory state/capitalism China represents can be an arduous task, and the issue is still under debate. This article uses a dynamic regulatory perspective to examine how the Chinese government has changed its roles of governance and relationships with global companies. Obviously, the changes would depend on the type, scope, power and other case-by-case intricacies of global companies. Using statistics across the 100 largest global companies chosen from Fortune's Global 500, this article explores the central tendency and relationship between regulators and global companies in China. As the evidence tends to suggest, in no respect can China's regulatory choices be looked upon as those of the regulatory state represented in the literature. The regulatory tactics of the Chinese government have merely allowed it to utilize the professional/technical expertise of the more well-established and/or credible foreign actors and regulators. The Chinese government has never its compromised long-term national goals or interests.