China and the Reconfiguration of Global Economic Governance
The US led international economic order has endured since the end of World War Two. China’s rapid economic ascent, along with other rising powers like Brazil and India, have raised questions as to how they will reshape the international order including specific institutions. Changing economic weights have already affected the possibility of realizing international trade agreements through the WTO. Monetarily, the shift from the G7 to the G20 was hastened by the need for economic stimulus from rising powers after the Global Financial Crisis beginning in 2007. In terms of global development, aid lending is highly contested over the need for borrowers to have greater ownership over their development while holding onto well-established principles designed to protect the environment and societies. Contesting visions are apparent between the US and China over the future of international development lending. While China has benefited from the international order and there is some recognition that it will seek to uphold it, this does not mean that China will not by its very existence, influence international institutions. How will its economic weight shape global economic and political structures? Will China’s non-democratic model of government affect how global economic decisions are made? This focus group, led by Hans Fischer Senior Fellow Prof. Susan Park and her host Prof. Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt, will map China’s role in global economic governance with an eye towards theory building regarding the role of hegemons in global economic governance and the Multilateral Development Banks in particular.
New Special Issue on China’s Rise and the Reconfiguration of Global Economic Governance
China’s rapid economic and political ascension is reshaping the architecture of global economic governance. In some cases, Chinese initiatives complement existing multilateral structures; in others, they challenge or circumvent them entirely. This new special issue of the Review of International Political Economy, guest edited by Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt (Technical University of Munich) and Susan Park (University of Sydney), provides a comprehensive analysis of how China seeks to reconfigure global economic governance in an era of shifting power. The volume examines China’s role across key domains such as development finance, trade, and sovereign debt restructuring. It presents detailed, empirically grounded studies of China’s strategies—ranging from deep cooperation to active contestation—and explores how and why China chooses to support, challenge, or reform multilateral economic institutions. In doing so, the special issue offers new theoretical and practical insights into the dynamics of global governance amid China’s rise and the responses of established powers like the United States.
The special issue includes the following contributions:
• Heldt, E. C., & Park, S. (2025). China’s rise and the reconfiguration of global economic governance. Review of International Political Economy, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2482853
• Heldt, E. C., Schmidtke, H., & Serrano Oswald, O. (2025). Multilateralism à la carte: how China navigates global economic institutions. Review of International Political Economy, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2495694
• Hopewell, K. (2025). Challenging the status quo-revisionist power dichotomy: China and the United States in the trade regime. Review of International Political Economy, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2493802
• Hameiri, S., & Jones, L. (2025). Explaining China’s approach to the global governance of sovereign debt distress: a state transformation analysis. Review of International Political Economy, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2451753
• Petry, J. (2025). Wall Street in China: the malleability of global finance in the age of geopolitics. Review of International Political Economy, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2488307
• Yeo, Y. (2025). Competitive infrastructure investment diffusion: emulating and learning from China. Review of International Political Economy, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2495689
• Huang, Y., & Brautigam, D. (2025). Socialisation, policy opportunity, and bureaucratic bargaining: explaining China’s zig-zag engagement with multilateral debt restructuring. Review of International Political Economy, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2499637
• Zou, Y., & Benabdallah, L. (2025). Fragmenting China: a relational approach to analyzing Chinese private companies in Africa. Review of International Political Economy, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2499631
• Qian, J., Vreeland, J., & Zhao, J. (2025, forthcoming). In-group punishment in international relations: U.S. reaction to the founding of China’s AIIB. Review of International Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2504452