Understanding Chinese Companies’ Overseas Stock Market Listings: Global Financial Networks and Multi-scalar States

Abstract

Over the past three decades, the overseas stock market listings of Chinese companies have emerged as a significant economic phenomenon, a key element of rapidly expanding Chinese capitalism. To understand this phenomenon, financial geographers emphasise China’s increasing integration into global financial networks, attributing its momentum primarily to the key network actors of international financial and business services firms. While this perspective captures the relational geographies of the process, it remains limited in that it downplays the role of other territorial actors, particularly the state, in driving these overseas listings. Drawing insights from a broad range of theoretical works illuminating the state’s role in enforcing extra-territorial regulation, structuring geopolitical economy, shaping capitalist variegation, managing capital circuits and accumulation, and financialising its local statecraft, the thesis develops a multi-scalar state approach to incorporate the analysis of these dimensions. Focusing on the key firm actors and financial market infrastructures within global financial networks, as well as their interrelations with multi-scalar states, this thesis centres analysis on the nexus between multi-scalar states and global financial networks. This integrated theoretical framework is used to investigate Chinese companies’ overseas listings, shedding light on the mechanisms for multi-scalar states to exert influence on global financial networks. Adopting a mixed method approach which integrates quantitative firm data analysis, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant observations, the empirical analysis of this thesis encompasses four distinct case studies of the overseas listings by Chinese companies. The first case study of New York listings by Chinese companies investigates the significance of the geopolitical economy co-shaped by China and the United States for global financial networks. The second case study explores Hong Kong listings, focusing on the critical financial market infrastructure of Hong Kong Stock Exchange and how it has been projecting the political objectives of the Chinese state in global financial networks. The third case study analyses the emerging European listings through Global Deposit Receipts, considering them as an international expansion of Chinese financial capitalism in global financial networks. The fourth case study discusses the role of Chinese local states in promoting overseas listings, highlighting their significant presence within global financial networks while underpinned by the central-local dynamics in China. By understanding the overseas listings of Chinese companies in these terms, this thesis underscores the multifaceted ways in which the state is present in global financial networks. The empirical findings reveal various mechanisms through which the state exerts influence over global financial networks, advancing a political-economic understanding of these networks. Moreover, drawing on the concept of multi-scalar states, this research deepens the economic geography literature’s comprehension of the role of the state in contemporary global capitalism.