China as a laboratory to renegotiate globalization: Statecraft through the selective exclusion of foreign capital

Abstract

Building on Ilias Alami's invitation to reconceptualize foreign investment screening mechanisms as state tools for renegotiating (post)globalization, this commentary mobilizes China's historical engagement with foreign capital, positioning it as a ‘laboratory’ for rethinking statecraft amid the transformations of global capitalism. By tracing the genealogy of selective regulatory practices – including the establishment of special economic zones – this analysis underscores how China's ‘exceptional spaces’ and ‘exceptional legal forms’ have actively reshaped globalization through the strategic exclusion of foreign capital from critical national sectors. Moving beyond reductionist framings of ‘state capitalism’ and ‘globalization’, the commentary foregrounds the layered and contingent processes of valorization and accumulation that characterize contemporary capitalist globalization.