Paper short abstract:

The proposed paper will examine the policy framework organising the strategic coupling of Chinese lead firms with domestic suppliers in the Suez cooperation zone in Egypt. It asks whether an emerging framework for collaboration between China and its strategic partners converges or departs from d

Paper long abstract:

Chinese economic cooperation zones in Africa are initiating new patterns of global production, investment and trade cooperation, linking Chinese manufacturers to additional markets abroad while promising to develop the export industries of host economies and increase African exports to China. Previous studies have explored the diverse ways in which Chinese manufacturing investments impact recipient economies, yet the broader development orientation of Chinese investment and trade practices remains unexplored. Taking the Chinese-built Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone in Egypt as an empirical reference point, the proposed paper will explore China's evolving role in global production, focusing on the question of whether an emerging framework for collaboration between China and its strategic partners converges or departs from dominant modes of regulating and governing global economic integration. The main argument this paper hopes to makes is that the Chinese economic cooperation zone in Suez largely follows pro-market recipes of trade and investment liberalisation, a strategy that bears little resemblance to China's own definition of special economic zones. The Suez zone fosters a model of production integration based on the notion that the beneficial dynamics of firm coordination are sufficient as a mechanism for developing supplier linkages. It nonetheless employs a kind of demand driven industrial policy which makes governments responsible for enhancing lead-firm governance. This entails facilitating market access for lead firms by making available to capital economic rents in the form of incentives, public goods and services, and fixed capital assets. The new notions of state and market that the zone