Michael Jacobsen

Redefining Beijing Consensus: ten economic principles

We argue that, owing to the conspicuous failure of Washington Consensus-guided reforms in most parts of the developing world in the 1990s and the outbreak of the current global financial crisis, the Washington Consensus, as a general term of neoliberal free market economic thinking, has been withering. In the meantime, the Chinese economic model has gained wide recognition and praise worldwide. Joshua C. Ramo coined the term ‘Beijing Consensus’ as an alternative approach to economic development for developing nations. There has been hot debate on the notion of a Beijing Consensus. We argue that even though there are some problems in Ramos original definition of Beijing Consensus, we should not reject this notion altogether. Instead, we should try to come up with better conceptualizations of this term. In this paper, we sum up 10 general principles of the Chinese development model as our new definition of the Beijing Consensus.

Positioning strategies of Southeast Asian Chinese entrepreneurs

Abstract Based on recent fieldwork, this article examines the factor of ethnicity in the positioning strategies of ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in relation to the emergence of China as a land of seemingly great economic potential. The focus is on small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs, rather than highly mobile business conglomerates. The article compares such entrepreneurs in Manado (eastern Indonesia), Singapore and Johor Baru (southern Peninsular Malaysia). The analysis reveals different versions of “Chineseness” in the three cities, produced by different demographic, social and political contexts. What these versions have in common is the subject position of being constructed as “Other” in opposition to the indigenous “Self.” Nevertheless, despite such “othering” processes, these entrepreneurs are committed to local societies to which their families and fortunes are tied. They do not regard China as a diasporic “home.” Their “Chineseness,” defined through exclusion, does not enhance their proximity to contemporary China.