Learning geoeconomics: China’s experimental financial and monetary initiatives

China’s rise is increasingly impacting on the global financial and monetary order. To manage its growing centrality in global financial flows and its new relevance for patterns of currency usage, Beijing has been creating a set of new institutional arrangements in three crucial fields: the provision of crisis liquidity, development financing, and a global infrastructure to internationalize its currency. In contrast to the dominant power political interpretation of such developments, this article highlights the strong linkages of Beijing’s new initiatives with the changes in China’s capitalist development path and stresses their experimental character that serves to manage the economic and political risks of China’s accelerating financial internationalization. With a distinct learning attitude regarding its rising geoeconomic prominence and engagement, Beijing’s risk-averse strategy involves a very careful linking, layering, and nesting of new arrangements.