The limits to China’s non-interference foreign policy: Pro-state interventionism and the rescaling of economic governance

China’s foreign policy has been long committed to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. While one could easily point out past and present-day inconsistencies in its implementation, this paper argues that defenders of the principle and critics alike often rely on a limited interpretation of ‘interference’ or ‘intervention’ that is based on an ideology of Westphalian sovereignty. In particular, the paper finds issue with the conceptual distinction between the political or diplomatic on the one hand and the economic on the other. Instead, markets, society and politics occur simultaneously and can only act as discrete realms in epistemological abstractions, as the Polanyian concept of embeddedness reminds us. From this vantage point, it is argued that non-interference is a semi-formal institution that governs China’s diplomatic engagements and affects its economic activities. While the totality of China’s interactions with the world has diverse and sometimes contradictory impacts on global governance, non-interference itself has apparent consequences for the rescaling of regional economic governance. In particular, the paper submits that Chinese non-interference results in the empowerment of political elites at national levels, and thus in the (re)emergence of the nation-state as a gate-keeper and facilitator of the advancement of capitalist enterprises. To a certain extent, China’s foreign policy moves away from supranational or regulatory regionalisms towards executive-based bilateralism.