The Making of China Concept Stocks in the Long 20th Century | Cheng Fang (Postdoctoral Researcher, VUB Cosmopolis)
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China Concept Stocks are a phenomenon that emerged under specific historical conditions. The term refers to shares issued on overseas stock exchanges by companies operating in China. It first emerged in the 1990s and has continued to the present. Those familiar with China’s economic system will recognise that some of the country’s most prominent companies, whether state-owned or privately-owned, once chose to go public overseas before listing domestically, even though China’s stock market has since become the second largest in the world. This has led to a joke that the pillars of the Chinese economy are actually in the hands of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
For financial geographers, this phenomenon is naturally situated within the broader context of financial globalisation. It reflects the growth of transnational financial interconnections that increasingly stretch across national boundaries, and in some cases loosen these constraints. For political geographers, this points to a reconfiguration of state power no longer bound by territorial boundaries. For international political economists, the issue turns on how China positions itself within the established global financial order, or seeks to bring about changes within it.
This study revisits the emergence, development, and more recent crisis surrounding China Concept Stocks in the US stock market over the past several decades. It examines the roles played by different state and market actors in this process, and situates these actors within the macro-historical framework developed by Giovanni Arrighi in The Long Twentieth Century. In doing so, the research seeks to engage with the above scholarly debates and to connect them to the broader transformations unfolding in the global economy.
Cheng Fang researches the political economy of global capital markets, and how it shapes uneven regional development, financial geographies, and international relations. include international stock markets, financial and business services, and overseas financing by Chinese companies. His current work explores the growing intersection of finance and digital technology and its broader implications. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography from Durham University and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).