| Summary: | The paper analyses the evolution of China Mobile – one of China’s pioneer ‘national champions’, and one of the world’s largest telecom companies – through the lens of Global Financial Networks, focusing on the role of advanced business services, financial centres, and offshore jurisdictions in economic development. It demonstrates that despite being a domestic company, China Mobile is plugged firmly into the Global Financial Networks, with incorporation in Hong Kong, cross-listing in Hong Kong and New York, and opaque offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands. Global advanced business services firms, with Goldman Sachs in the lead, have been instrumental in the very conception of China Mobile in 1997, and its subsequent expansion, thus helping the Chinese government consolidate and modernize the whole telecom sector. The case study highlights the position of Hong Kong as an onshore-offshore financial centre intermediating between global financial markets and Mainland China, and underwriting the reputation of China’s ‘national champions’. The analysis also points to the advantages of Beijing over Shanghai as a command centre of state owned and controlled enterprises, acting as a magnet for advanced business services. The relevance of the GFNs to China, a latecomer on the stage of financial globalization, highlights the scope for applying the concept to the rest of the world, and its potential contribution to economic geography.
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