The Anatomy of Resistance: China, Russia, and the Price of Real Sovereignty. Part 2

Both countries maintained or rebuilt substantial state capacity over their strategic economic sectors… the opposite of what structural adjustment programs prescribed for the Global South, which systematically dismantled state capacity under the banner of market reform.

The conclusion was sobering: across completely unique geographies, histories, and political systems, the mechanisms of dependence (resource extraction, dollar debt, industrial suppression, financial exclusion) reliably reproduce themselves, regardless of the flag flying over the capital. This second part turns to the nations that have, to varying but significant degrees, broken out of that architecture.

China and Russia serve as the most conclusive illustrations of sovereignty as an accomplishment, rather than as an ideal or goal. Understanding how they achieved this autonomy, and at what sacrifice, is not just an exercise of admiration; it is a matter of geo/political realism, an empirical examination of the pragmatic repercussions of sovereignty for the states in the Global South.

Any sincere attempt at discussing sovereignty in the Global South will have to deal with the consequences of achieving actual sovereignty for these countries in the past.

China: The Return of Historical Agency

What China has done in the past forty years is the most profound reversal of colonial-era dependence in modern history. During the so-called “century of humiliation,” from the First Opium War in 1839 to the communist revolution in 1949, China was carved up by European powers, forced into unequal treaties, denied tariff sovereignty, and systematically deindustrialized.

From this position of profound historical injury, China has reclaimed what it regards as its rightful standing as a leading world civilization and economic power. The mechanism of this reversal directly contradicts the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus.

China did not develop through free trade and capital account liberalization. It developed through a state-directed industrial policy combining selective openness to foreign capital with strict controls on the conditions of that access; massive public investment in infrastructure and education; technology transfer requirements imposed on foreign companies; protection of strategic industries; and tight exchange rate management to support export competitiveness.

This is precisely the approach that Ha-Joon Chang describes as the actual method used by Britain, the United States, Germany, France, and Japan during their own industrialization phases, and the approach that Western-dominated international institutions now formally forbid developing countries from employing.

“Rich countries have kicked away the ladder by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. The developed countries did not get where they are now through the policies and institutions that they recommend to developing countries today.” — Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002)

“Rich countries have kicked away the ladder by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor........

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