State Capitalist
Modern China, particularly under Xi Jinping, is a prime example of State Capitalism. While Deng Xiaoping's reforms opened the economy to foreign investment and private enterprise, the government retains major ownership in crucial sectors like banking, energy, and telecommunications. Industrial policy, Five-Year Plans, and state-linked financing guide economic development. Political power remains centralized under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with strict control over media, NGOs, and opposition. Russia under Vladimir Putin also follows a State Capitalist model, characterized by strong state involvement and oligarchic influence in key industries.
What it believes
Markets are tools, not sovereigns: let firms compete and prices work, but keep the state in the boardroom — owning champions, directing credit, vetting investment — so that accumulation serves political ends, not the reverse.
The appeal
It is the actually-existing model of the century's fastest development: East Asian tigers and China's rise. For governments impatient with both plan and laissez-faire, it offers growth with a steering wheel.
Where it breaks
The steering wheel corrupts: politically directed credit becomes politically protected failure, and champions too connected to fail accumulate risk the public later absorbs. And a state that owns the economy rarely tolerates rivals it must answer to.
Among its neighbours
The Nazi above stands as the warning of political capitalism taken to annihilation. The Integralist to its left orders the economy by faith rather than strategy. Below, the Neo-Conservative wants markets spread by state power abroad rather than owned by it at home.
Figures — real and imagined — who share the State Capitalist base ideology. They differ only on the third axis: from radical to restorationist, each is a different face of a State Capitalist.
The company you keep.
The social axis (progressive ↔ traditional) splits State Capitalist into nine named shades. Take the quiz to find out which one is yours.
- Radical State Capitalist
- Progressive State Capitalist
- Reformist State Capitalist
- Heterodox State Capitalist
- State Capitalist
- Rooted State Capitalist
- Traditional State Capitalist
- Reactionary State Capitalist
- Restorationist State Capitalist