Challenging the liberal international order by chipping away at US Structural power: China's state-guided investment in technology and finance in Russia

This paper examines China's investments in Russia as a case study of China's challenge to the liberal order. It surveys the political economy of China's state-owned enterprises-the primary vehicles for China's investments in Russia-in a global context. It argues that China's investments in Russia constitute an emerging structural economic challenge to the liberal international order. The trend of China's investments in Russia illustrates Beijing's strategy of fostering global economic integration that ultimately may not conform to the geopolitical underpinnings of a liberal international order. It looks at two cases of China's investments in Russia: the technology sector and the financial sector. It shows that the liberal order's tension with China's strategy vis-a-vis globalization is rooted in its impact on US structural power and suggests that the active presence of Chinese state-guided capital in Russia's high-tech development and its financial system illustrate the nature of this challenge.