Event

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The Specter of Global China: Is Chinese Capital a Different Kind of Capital?

Ching Kwan Lee, Professor of Sociology, UCLA
| ANNS 111, Annenberg School for Communication

Drawing on data collected through comparative ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese investments in Zambia in the past five years, this talk seeks to answer the questions: What is the peculiarity of Chinese capital? What are the impacts of Chinese investments on African development? Rejecting both the Western rhetoric of “Chinese colonialism” and the Chinese self-justification of “south-south collaboration”, I examine the mechanisms, interests and limits of Chinese power through a double comparison: between Chinese and non-Chinese companies, and between copper and construction.