The Chinese Path to a Global Financial Statecraft Strategy: between Challenge and Adaptation to the Global Financial Governance System

Abstract

The chapter examines China's evolving role in global financial governance between 2000 and 2020. It argues that China is neither a status-quo nor a revolutionary power but a revisionist one, selectively altering inconvenient rules while preserving beneficial aspects of the liberal order. Using financial statecraft theory, the authors map Chinese strategies across systemic, regional, and bilateral levels, and across defensive and offensive instruments. The 2008 global financial crisis is treated as a turning point that opened space for emerging powers and fostered a fragmented, pluripolar architecture. Empirically, the chapter analyzes China's push for quota reform in the IMF and World Bank, the expansion of bilateral swap lines and the Chiang Mai Initiative, and the creation of the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It concludes that China's rise has diversified sources of development finance without displacing the IMF's central role in liquidity provision and global power shifts.