China’s Globalized Agribusiness

Challenging conventional views of the Chinese state, this book shows how agribusiness elites actively contest and reshape power, revealing a state defined by rivalry and shifting capitalist alliances.

China’s political economy is often portrayed as stable and unified under the Communist Party, but this book argues that the reality is more complex. It shows how the rise of capitalist groups has generated political contestation and fractures within state institutions. The book presents the Chinese state as a contested space shaped by evolving state-market relations and economic rivalries, arguing that deeper integration into the global economy has intensified internal struggles.

Drawing on rich empirical evidence, primarily from Chinese sources, the book focuses on the soybean complex as a lens to analyse a globally integrated sector central to food security. It traces the diverging trajectories of private and state-owned agribusinesses, revealing five distinct capitalist groups whose executives and shareholders actively compete to shape policy and institutional arrangements. The state-owned COFCO – China’s leading agricultural commodity trader under Xi Jinping – features prominently, representing a capitalist class both state-controlled and globally connected. Its rise illustrates tensions between national food security priorities and global agribusiness expansion, offering new insights into the evolving dynamics of China’s political economy.