Chinese 'Colonialism,' Capital Accumulation, and the Belt and Road Initiative

Panelists

YAN Hairong, Professor at Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences and Department of Sociology. Her earlier research focused on rural-to-urban migrant domestic workers in urban China. She thus examined the transformation in rural-urban relations, gender relations and class relations in China’s reform process. In the recent decade, she has become concerned with food sovereignty and agrarian change in China. She publishes in the Journal of Peasant Studies and the Journal of Agrarian Change and contributes to the food sovereignty network in China. For the past two decades, she has collaborated with Barry Sautman on China-Africa links and has co-authored East Mountain Tiger, West Mountain Tiger: China, Africa, the West and “Colonialism” and, in Chinese, China in Africa: Discourse and Practices.

Barry SAUTMAN, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a political scientist (PhD Columbia University) and lawyer (JD UCLA, LLM NYU) who primarily teaches international law, China/US relations, contemporary China, ethnicity and nationalism. He collaborates with Yan Hairong to conduct research on China-Africa links, including political economy, labor rights, migration between China and Africa and interactions between Chinese and Africans, representations and perceptions of China and Chinese in Africa, and the supposed strategic rivalry between the US and China in Africa. He has published several monographs and numerous journal articles, as well as print media op-ed pieces and online contributions.

Mamadou Diouf is Leitner Family Professor of African Studies (Middle Eastern, Southern Asian and African Studies Department) and History (History Department) at Columbia University, New York. He previously served at the University of Michigan (2000-2007), the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal. His publications include, L’Afrique dans le temps du monde (2023); « Peindre le pouvoir, Exposer l’autorité en Afrique/Painting Power: Exposing Authority in Africa », (essay), Kehinde Wiley, Dédale du Pouvoir/A Maze of Power. Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris (09/20/2023 to 01/14/202. Paris, Templon, 2024; Senghor et les arts. La reinvention de l’universel (with Sarah Frioux-Salgas et Sarah Lignier, catalogue of an exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris 2023) and the following edited books: Déborder la Négritude. Arts, politique et société à Dakar (with Maureen Murphy, 2020); The Arts of Citizenship in Africa. Spaces of Belonging (with Rosalind Fredericks, 2015); Les arts de la citoyenneté au Sénégal. Espaces Contestés et Civilités Urbaines (with F. Fredericks, 2013); Tolerance, Democracy and the Sufis in Senegal, 2013); Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic: Rituals and Remembrances, (with I. Nwankwo, 2010) and New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power and Femininity (with Mara Leichtman, 2009).

Professor Diouf is a member of the Columbia University Committee on Global Thought. He was elected member in 2024 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Description

Global capital accumulation involves international trade, a flow of profits, interest, and rent from investments, and wealth owned by a country’s investors in other countries. With the increased role of China in the global economy, some American elites have come to view China as the US’s “one peer competitor” and a threat to its hegemony. Their mobilization in response to this perception includes a claim that China practices colonialism or neo-colonialism. The US campaign particularly focuses on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s multi-faceted effort to spur investment and infrastructure building in developing countries. We will elaborate on mechanisms of global capital accumulation in the context of China’s interface with the Global South, especially through case studies of key BRI countries, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka.