Deflected disruption: payments and the taming of Chinese fintech

Abstract

Why and how do state authorities seek to deflect and harness technological disruption? Under what conditions do they shift between welcoming disruptive innovation as a driver of economic modernisation and seeing it as a threat to political and financial stability? We examine these questions in the context of how authorities handled the emergence of payments systems attached to digital platform companies within mainland China, where Ant Group and Tencent are used by over 1 billion people, and their international expansion to Southeast Asia. We argue that intermediation and the informational power derived from it are central to the political economy of Fintech disruption. Authorities and banking incumbents were accommodating of disruption to the extent it aligned with goals of increasing economic modernisation and efficiency. However, they were less tolerant of Fintech disruption that compromised their intermediary positions and informational power, and acted more strongly to deflect or block it. Similarly, Chinese fintechs in Southeast Asia have been limited by intense competition in target markets, as states in the region manage potential disruption of their international monetary orders. States are able to deflect the trajectory of Fintech disruption towards their own objectives, even if they cannot entirely stop or determine it.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. New Political Economy, 2026 · DOI ↗