The Long Twentieth Century, and counting? Global financial networks, geopolitics, and the making of China Concept Stocks in the US

Amid growing concern about the geopolitical reordering of the global economy, this paper examines the structural entanglements between geopolitics and global financial networks. Against accounts that portray geopolitics as a recent and external disruption to financial globalization, it argues that geopolitical dynamics have long been embedded in the formation and operation of global finance. Taking inspiration from Giovanni Arrighi, the paper develops a conceptual framework grounded in a multi-scalar understanding of the state and informed by both financial geography and the geopolitical economy of finance. Empirically, it traces the development of China Concept Stocks, understood here as the overseas listings of Chinese companies in the US since the 1990s. The analysis identifies three distinct phases, each shaped by the changing geopolitical objectives and strategic actions of China and the US. By foregrounding state-centered geopolitics and global financial networks across the three phases, this paper offers a historically grounded account of the emergence, expansion, and recent crisis of China Concept Stocks. In doing so, it situates these developments within the US financial expansion and its unfolding crisis, a period that marks the concluding phase of the current systemic cycle of accumulation which Arrighi referred to as the Long Twentieth Century.