INTRODUCTION

It should not be surprising if Joshua Ramo's “new physics of development and power” hold tremendous appeal for Arab regime elites. Ramo talks of the “electric power” of the Chinese example – its demonstration of an alternative path to development which challenges not only the US-led Washington Consensus for economic liberalism laced with political democratisation, but also offers the potential to translate an economic transformation into global power projection to rival that of America itself. For the authoritarian Arab regimes, with their lack-lustre exercises in structural adjustment, patchy records of economic growth, fragile human development performance and post-colonial resentments at external interventions in regional affairs, what could be more attractive than the so-called Beijing Consensus? As Ramo himself says:

For countries aspiring to comparable development, China's model has become far more than the go-global trade strategy of the 1990s. After all, adherents of the Washington Consensus have been pushing that themselves for decades. The appeal lies instead in the understanding of development as something more than unquestioning engagement with, and submission to, the dictums of global capitalism.