Financialization and Imaginaries emanating from “Financial Literature” in Shanghai (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper aims at examining how, in the emerging financialization of the Chinese economy, a whole new set of economic imaginaries is gripping the country, emanating from both within China and from abroad. Many factors are shaping the imaginary of Chinese financialization: the desire to depict the financialization as an index of progress and a national achievement, not as a threat; the hope to shape a domestic and global financial space within which financialization can operate smoothly; the effort to keep it under centralized control; and the difficulty of dealing with the spontaneous emergence of subjectivities which could question the whole process. Due to their self-learning practices, their large numbers and their irrational actions towards investment, these players are increasingly disturbing state financial operations. Predominantly, the imaginaries, linked to financialization, have taken the form of a "stock fever", i.e. an all encompassing tide which is engulfing the whole society, without distinguishing between rich and poor, formal and informal experts, urban and rural. One of the seedbeds of this fever is the widespread and easily accessible financial advice books, specifically “how-to manuals”, biographies of millionaires, how-to-become -millionaires, how-to-invest-to-become-millionaires, and the so-called jinrong wenxue financial literature. This piece is characterized by an “of praise” and an “encomiastic tone”, in which enrichment through financialization is depicted as rational, normal, and widespread, and above all perfectly feasible. One outstanding by-product of this approach is the invention of the so-called “absence of hatred towards rich people”. This could be considered partly as a consequence of the “official” encouragement to become rich but also as a clear manifestation of how strongly the financialization is exerting its cultural hegemony over the local society. The emergence of financial literature, along with its users (later to become players), reveal the main features and tensions which characterize the way financialization is occurring in China, particularly with regard to one of its cradles and epicenters, Shanghai.

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