Reconciling state capitals: The embeddedness of EU-China state-sponsored funds and the geoeconomics of competing Sino-EU interests

State capitalist entities manifest in a plethora of forms, one such being state-sponsored funds like the Silk Road Fund and the European Investment Fund. Both are pools of capital that serve the ‘profit plus’ interests of state capital: they are publicly-owned and ultimately beholden to publicly-vested mandates embedded in distinct state-society complexes of their own. State-sponsored funds have established co-investment arrangements to facilitate bilateral investment, which are revealing of the intensification of state capital accumulation in the contemporary moment. The design of these arrangements begs the question, how do state capitals embedded in distinct political economies of their own reconcile what can be competing accumulation imperatives and geoeconomic interests? For instance, how fund partnerships serve both the strategic-industrial interest of Chinese state capital and the EU’s commitment to liberal norms. With particular attention to Sino-European partnerships, this paper examines how these arrangements reflect their distinct state-society embedding, the geoeconomic calculus of competing Sino-EU interests, and the complexity and hybridity of contemporary state capital.