My research examines how transformations in global political and economic power reshape the institutions, markets and governance structures that underpin the international order. Focusing particularly on China, the politics of global finance and changing relations between states and markets, I study how geopolitical competition, different forms of capitalism and the infrastructures of the global economy shape patterns of power and economic governance.

Within this broader agenda, my research has developed around three closely connected areas: the development and internationalisation of China’s financial system; the political role of financial and economic infrastructures; and the transformation of global finance and its implications for the global economic order. Increasingly, these strands come together in my work on geoeconomics, great-power competition, empire and the changing relationships between states, markets and power.

China’s capital markets and their integration into global finance

In this first research area, I analyse the development, reform and internationalisation of China’s financial system within the context of a historically US-dominated liberal global financial order. In 1989, capital markets did not exist in China. Fast forward three decades, and China is home to the 2nd largest futures, equity and bond markets in the world. And while China’s capital markets were closed to the outside world for decades, they have become connected to both regional and global financial markets at an unprecedented pace. Understanding this transformation is important not only for the study of China’s political economy, but also for wider debates about state capitalism, globalisation and the changing international economic order.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Frankfurt where I conducted 200+ expert interviews and collected ethnographic data from 40+ financial industry events, I have investigated how the capital markets that have developed in China function quite differently from global capital markets. Instead of ‘global’ markets which facilitate the power of private financial actors, Chinese capital markets are intricately linked with state control and national development goals defying liberal perceptions of how markets ought to operate. Rather than Big Bang style liberalisation, China’s financial opening is therefore a controlled, reversible process, producing an often ambiguous relationship with global finance.

This research contributes to debates on financialisation, state capitalism, neoliberalism and comparative capitalism. More broadly, it asks how different institutional configurations of states and markets shape economic outcomes and what happens when distinct models of capitalism become increasingly interconnected within the same global system.

While my earlier work concentrated primarily on how Chinese exchanges and other market institutions organise domestic financial markets in ways that enable state control and the pursuit of national policy objectives, my more recent research increasingly examines the international consequences of China’s financial transformation, including its implications for global financial governance, international economic power and China’s relationship with the United States and other major economies.

Infrastructures, markets and economic power

In this second research area, I use infrastructures as an analytical perspective for understanding the organisation and politics of global markets. Markets do not emerge spontaneously: they depend on infrastructures that make economic exchange possible and simultaneously shape how markets function. Data, indices, financial products, trading platforms, standards, rules, payment systems, and clearing and settlement arrangements are therefore not simply technical foundations of markets. They are institutions through which economic activity is organised and power is exercised.

My research examines the public and private actors that govern these infrastructures and thereby shape the operation of the global economy: how exchanges organise equity markets, how index providers influence global investment flows, or how ESG rating providers define sustainable investment. But rather than a technical exercise, these infrastructures are informed by different politics which have important consequences for financialization processes, global economic governance and the distribution of power between states, markets and different public and private actors.

This infrastructural perspective also provides a way of connecting the study of financial markets to broader questions in International Relations and International Political Economy. Whether analysing structural power, private authority, economic statecraft, weaponised interdependence or global order, studying infrastructures makes visible the mechanisms through which economic power is produced, exercised and contested.

Increasingly, I extend this perspective to examine the role of economic infrastructures in geoeconomic competition: how payment systems, financial centres, commodity markets, investment channels and other transnational networks can facilitate state power, create dependencies or become sites of geopolitical contestation.

Comparing global state–market configurations and financial systems

In this third research area, I examine variation in the organisation of markets and the relationship between states and finance across different political economies. Global finance has changed significantly since the global financial crisis of 2007–09, not least because of the growing importance of China and other emerging economies. Yet much scholarship continues to treat financial markets as if they follow a common liberal institutional model. My comparative work instead asks how markets differ across political and institutional contexts and what these differences mean for global economic interactions.

As the principle investigator of the DFG-funded StateCapFinance research project at Goethe University Frankfurt (2020-2025), I investigate similarities and differences in the relationships between states and (global) financial markets in China, the BRICS, East Asia, the United States and Europe. Combining comparative institutional analysis, large financial datasets and interview research, this work investigates whether financial markets are organised according to different institutional logics, whether they consequently function differently, and how they generate different political and socio-economic outcomes. This comparative perspective links the study of financial systems to broader debates about varieties of capitalism and international economic order. It also raises questions about what happens when differently organised political economies become increasingly interconnected: whether integration produces convergence, persistent institutional diversity or new forms of conflict between competing economic models.

At the same time, my work examines broader post-crisis transformations within global finance. Regulation has changed certain areas of finance, banks for instance have borne the brunt of regulatory costs, while others – such as the shadow banking sector – have remained relatively unchanged. New actors have emerged in global finance: proprietary trading firms have become a dominant force with the spread of high-frequency trading, clearinghouses have gained in prominence with regulations such as EMIR or Dodd-Frank, asset managers have become the new universal owners in the new age of passive investments. Further, alternative ways to organise financial markets have emerged, notably in emerging markets such as China, India or Russia.

Taken together, these developments have produced new actor constellations and new relationships between public and private power. My research therefore investigates how changing forms of market organisation, new financial actors and the rise of China and other emerging economies are transforming global financial governance and, ultimately, the wider global economic order.

Empire and the geopolitics of global finance

My current research brings these three strands together by examining how intensifying geopolitical competition is transforming the organisation of the global economy. In particular, I am interested in the return of the state as an increasingly visible actor within markets and the ways in which geopolitical rivalry is reshaping relations between public authority and private economic actors.