8 - International Financial Regulation and China

Summary

One question posed by the international regime of financial regulation is how newcomers will respond to it. China, with its one-party government, cultural uniqueness, and relatively recent embrace of financial capitalism presents a distinctive test of the willingness of the developing world to buy into a system of globalized governance that has largely been devised by others. But if this lack of participation suggests that there may be reasons why China – and the rest of the developing world – would want to stay out of the international financial regulatory regime, there are, as we will see, many reasons to suspect that there are incentives encouraging them to join it. Thus far, China has not complained about its lack of power over the international regulatory process that it has joined. It has embraced both G20 membership and financial regulatory cooperation, and joined the relevant networks.