Muyang Chen. 2024. The Latecomer’s Rise: Policy Banks and the Globalization of China’s Development Finance. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press)

The Latecomer's Rise: Policy Banks and the Globalization of China's Development Finance is an excellent book that introduces the reader to China's two main policy banks active in global development: the China Development Bank (CDB) and China Exim Bank.Author Muyang Chen draws on a wide range of data sources, including her own series of interviews with key stakeholders, to offer deep insights into these pivotal institutions in China's international development finance.It is a very valuable source for scholars, policymakers, business professionals, development practitioners, students, and everyone interested in China's rise.When you open the book, you expect to gain novel insights into the inner workings of the major Chinese policy banks active in global development.And the book delivers on this expectation.However, before analyzing the global dynamics, the reader gets an overview of the development of the CDB's domestic activities and how this spurred China's own industrial and infrastructure development.Chapter 1 describes how China, transiting from a centrally planned economy to a state-led market economy, has set up its banking system after the initiation of the economic reform period.It impressively describes how China has developed its bond market from the ground up, and most importantly in the context of the book, how the CDB was able to attract huge funding without heavily relying on taxpayers' money.Market instruments enabled the CDB to self-raise capital and thus enhance local governments' fiscal capacities through formally separate local financial government vehicles.Chapter 2 explains how the CDB became pivotal in financing development projects of provincial governments and, by doing so, played a key role in the development