The Rise of China and Contestation in Global Tax Governance

Debate over the taxation of international business has focused on the importance of the United States and its large tech firms, paying low tax rates by using tax havens, in shaping the global political agenda. Yet in an era of China’s rise to power, this focus has overlooked both China’s influential political engagement with the global tax system, and how its changing economy alters its interests at home and abroad. In this paper, we address this oversight by providing an account of the sources and nature of the new Chinese global tax diplomacy. We argue that China's becoming a global net capital exporter, emergence as a major consumer market, and the growth of its own digital giant firms like Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, underpins its interest in simultaneous ‘going out’ and ‘bringing in’ foreign direct investment by selectively and strategically engaging with Western-liberal institutions. Specifically, we show how China variously challenges, defends, and develops alternatives to global tax standards in three cases: global efforts to tackle corporate tax avoidance, bilateral tax treaty negotiations, and administrative tax cooperation. A better understanding of China’s significant, distinctive and varying diplomatic engagement with Western economic institutions, will help inform debates on the Chinese business-politics nexus and expand analyses of global tax and economic politics beyond US-centrism