Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Based on 13 months of fieldwork in Pakistan, I explore how locals, despite limited engagement with the Chinese apparatus, construct the image of China. This gives a glimpse on shifting position in Thar, in the southeast of Pakistan, after the arrival of the Chinese funded coal mining projects.

Paper long abstract:

Several economic ailments had engulfed the Pakistani economy in 2013 but none were more prominent than the energy crisis, which had led to incessant blackouts throughout the country. Thus, when the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, was announced, all political parties and stakeholders celebrated the deal.

Thar, a desert region in the southeast of Pakistan, became the sight of numerous Chinese funded extraction and power generation projects as a result of the CPEC deal. The British Raj had imagined Thar as a ‘periphery’ and hence ‘unimportant’. The culture and the economy of Thar remained unaffected even after the independence of Pakistan in 1947. In the 1971 war, when the Indian forces took control over tracts of Thar, did the Pakistani state start to give importance to Thar, but only so far as treating it as a border state to be under constant vigilance. But since 2013, with Chinese funded coal operation, Thar has, for the first time in its history, become integral to the economy of the country.

For the locals in Thar, the dietary habits, the skin complexion, and the work attitude of the Chinese has become a source of intense and constant discussion and speculation. Based on 13 months of fieldwork in Pakistan from Aug 2021- Sept 2022, I explore how locals, despite limited engagement with the Chinese apparatus, construct the image of China which gives a glimpse on shifting position in the region after the arrival of coal mining projects.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Based on thirteen months of fieldwork research on a Chinese-financed and built infrastructure project in Ghana, the paper illustrates the imaginaries, promises, expectations, and delusions produced by Sino-Ghanaian infrastructural development in the local communities involved.

Paper long abstract:

The GFPLS project, a Chinese-funded and -built infrastructure project that included the construction of fishing ports and landing sites in twelve communities along the Ghanaian coast, has been characterised by long waits, delays, and challenges over time. Initially, the project raised high expectations among the communities involved. However, more than fifteen years passed between the first announcement of the project and its actual implementation. Moreover, as the project progressed, it became clear that things were not going as planned. In the end, as a result of design errors and technical (and political) decisions, the project has caused more problems than benefits for local people, especially local fishermen. In addition, although the project was promoted as providing valuable employment opportunities for local workers, Ghanaian workers employed by the Chinese SOE described working conditions on the Chinese construction sites as less than desirable.

This paper illustrates that while the hopes and delusions of local workers were more related to the characteristics of employment dynamics and labour relations within Chinese SOEs in Ghana, the delays, changes, and failures in infrastructure construction and design were more a result of the heterogeneous actor configurations and global assemblages that shape contemporary Chinese construction projects in Ghana.

At the same time, the paper shows how, in the case of the GFPLS project, all these dynamics, as different forms of contemporary encounters with global China, have contributed to the production of collective and individual hopes and aspirations, as well as disenchantments and delusions, at the local level.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Building on eight months of fieldwork in Lesotho and two months in China, this paper provides a gendered and generational perspective on the representatives of ‘global China’ in Lesotho's commercial areas and brings back the local state into discussions of encounters with global China.

Paper long abstract:

In Lesotho, a small-landlocked country in southern Africa, China’s growing influence is primarily felt in its commercial areas. These areas, with their small shops and businesses, are key sites for dynamic encounters with ‘global China’. Global China is represented through Chinese migrants, their businesses, and everyday practices. Over the last 30 years, Chinese migrants have taken over many shops and re-shaped the local job market. Local media are quick to portray Chinese migrants as leading prosperous lives with promising futures, while the hopes of Basotho have been shattered, leaving their futures uncertain. Yet, if we look beyond the physical and material presence of Chinese-run businesses, and closely observe migrants’ everyday practices a different picture emerges. Building on eight months of fieldwork in Lesotho and two months in China, I show that many Chinese, in particular women, face uncertain futures. Their seeming success in the present is gained by always exerting their utmost strength and risking their life and health to succeed (pinming). I argue that pinming is closely linked to the local state’s post-colonial development strategy and the 1998 riots. After 1998 riots, the state expelled the commercial areas from its development strategy. As a result, these once promising areas and the opportunities therein gradually faded. Chinese migrants, especially the younger ones, responded by questioning the practice of pinming. Overall, this paper provides a gendered and generational perspective on the representatives of ‘global China’ and brings back the local state into discussions of encounters with global China.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on long-term, multisited fieldwork in two ethnic Khmu communities in upland far-north Laos, this paper analyses how locally- and culturally-specific historical memories are shaping intimate, multifaceted engagements with ‘global China’ in the future-oriented present, and vice versa.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the role of locally- and culturally-specific historical memories in shaping engagements with ‘global China’ in an understudied but increasingly important part of the Southeast Asian resource frontier: the uplands of far-north Laos. How do the culturally-specific moralities conveyed in memories of previous encounter shape uplanders’ ethical evaluations of/eclectic engagements with China’s growing presence in their lives today? Conversely, how is China’s growing hard and soft power reshaping the role of upland pasts in providing moral guidance in Laos' increasingly disenchanted, future-oriented and Sino-centric present? I tackle these questions by drawing on long-term, ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in two ethnic Khmu communities intimately affected by China-driven commodification, hydropower development and agrarian transition. In so doing, my paper both balances the disproportionate scholarly focus on headline-making, BRI-related nodes and corridors and pushes back against the stereotype of Laos and its people as hapless prey to an all-devouring China. This paper also makes a case for a more nuanced anthropological approach to upland oral history: far from being unequivocally ‘marginal’ or even ‘subversive’ to official discourse emanating from Beijing and/or other national capitals, ethnic minority histories and their attendant aspirations, valuations and moral claims can resonate with broader tropes, for reasons owing to both agentive appropriation and locally-/culturally-specific dynamics.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the transformations of temporalities in a Serbian village caused by the exponential expansion of the open-cast copper mines, recently taken over by one of the world-leading Chinese copper and gold companies.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the transformations of temporalities in a Serbian village caused by the exponential expansion of the open-cast copper mines, recently taken over by one of the world-leading Chinese copper and gold companies. What kinds of future scenarios are being evoked by the expansion of the mine that today threatens to “swallow” the village in three to five years? How are novel geopolitical spatiotemporal arrangements experienced in the site that will be gone tomorrow? The paper explores these questions and different temporalities that the shifting industrial edges evoke among the locals. While discussing the “double bind” (Bateson 1972) and the temporalities experienced in this village, as well as the experiences of emptiness and contamination, the paper explores the production of social exclusions and marginalities in the area embedded within specific configurations of power within the unequal spatiotemporal configuration of contemporary global capitalism (Harvey 2007).

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a comparative study of Chinese tech companies that offer artificial intelligence products, this presentation examines the promissory imaginaries that emerge from China's artificial intelligence industry and charts their international afterlife through observations in the European context.

Paper long abstract:

The development of digital infrastructure is an important component of China's "going out" effort in global influence. Domestically, digital infrastructure is seen as a key driver of future economic growth and societal modernization; internationally, China's leading role in infrastructure-building and standard-setting is touted as a sign of the country's global ascendancy. Future-oriented imaginaries are particularly evident in the domain of artificial intelligence (AI), which includes industrial automation, logistics, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and consumer products. On the one hand, AI technologies play a key role in "sino-futurist" narratives that connect China's future with unrivaled speed in technological advancement; on the other, everyday discussions of these technologies rely on sinofuturist imaginaries, reinforcing the self-fulfilling prophecy of China's role in global automated futures. Drawing on a comparative study of Chinese tech companies that offer artificial intelligence products, this presentation examines the promissory imaginaries that emerge from China's artificial intelligence industry and charts their international afterlives through observations in the European context. By identifying and charting the circulation of sinofuturist tropes in the Chinese AI industry and their global reach, I argue for the need to critically examine how promissory narratives about technology are constructed and how their consolidation is connected to the global politics of time and speed.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper adopts a socio-technical lens on Chinese digital infrastructures in Switzerland. It explores how representatives of Chinese Information & Communication Technology companies and their Swiss partners address public concerns, emphasising Swissness and envisioning a high-tech future for all.

Paper long abstract:

Taking a socio-technical approach, this paper focuses on Chinese digital infrastructures, specifically fibre optic networks, in Switzerland and the Chinese and Swiss companies involved. Fibre optic networks, comprising internet cables, data centres, and various storage and switching components, form the foundation of digitalisation. In Switzerland, as elsewhere, Chinese technologies play a pivotal role in these networks. Despite Switzerland generally being more receptive to incorporating Chinese technologies compared to other Western countries, there is a growing scepticism within the Swiss public regarding potential future dependencies and cybersecurity concerns. This paper is based on ethnographic field research in Switzerland, including interviews with representatives of Chinese companies in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and their Swiss partner companies, participant observation during industry events and data centre visits, and documentary analysis. It asks how Chinese and Swiss company representatives navigate these public concerns. I demonstrate how, in an increasingly tense geopolitical setting, they attempt to disassociate these technologies from their Chineseness. This is reinforced by employing European workers who advocate for the company, presenting their companies as European and highlighting their Swissness. Meanwhile, their Swiss partners often conceal their Chinese collaborations and technologies. Moreover, company representatives present their technologies as future-proof, promising an ever more digital and automated era, necessary for sustained innovation and economic power. These presentations are framed around hopeful narratives envisioning a sustainable and green high-tech future for all.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores how financial professionals operating in cross-border finance between China and Europe constitute global hierarchies by combining temporalities of standardized financial procedures, state policies, national identifications and geopolitical confrontations.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation is based on interviews and participant observation carried out with financial professionals working in mergers and acquisitions, Venture Capital and Private Equity funds in China and Western Europe, including transactions where large companies based in China purchased small and medium enterprises based in Europe. Mobilizing a conceptual framework that foregrounds the multiple imaginaries of time that are part of everyday practice, it studies how financial professionals distribute money unequally by combining the temporalities of shareholder value, speculation and market efficiency established in standardized methods of valuation and investment, the organizational rules or the bureaucratic organizations where they work and various temporalities connecting to imaginaries of national and cultural conflict and hybridization, Chinese state policies and horizons of geopolitical confrontations. Doing so, they combine sometimes conflicting temporal horizons associated with various moral and political justifications of how money should be distributed unequally worldwide. These include short-term or long-term financial returns, long-term nation-building and tactical arrangements concerning the careers of people involved, such as those of geographically mobile financial intermediaries and of employees of state-owned enterprises in China and of small and medium enterprises in Europe, among others. The presentation explores how the encounters of global China and the global financial industry reproduce and transform global hierarchies of monetary distribution mobilizing various imaginaries to justify them.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

While Chinese state investments in Kenya are decreasing after its national election in 2022, new waves of private Chinese entrepreneurs are venturing in the construction sector in Nairobi. The paper shows ethnographically how geopolitics can impact personal life trajectories.

Paper long abstract:

While Chinese state investments in Kenya are slowly decreasing after its national election in 2022, new waves of private Chinese entrepreneurs are venturing in the construction sector in Nairobi. They look for new economic opportunities away from China's saturated job market, work pressure, as well as a real estate sector in crisis. Some of these businessmen come to Kenya to settle down.

Through their personal biographies, the paper focuses on private entrepreneurs' aspirations for the future. Via an ethnography of work, socialisation, and family life, their hopes and expectations emerge. The paper shows how the scale of geopolitics and economics can impact individual choices and personal life trajectories.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the temporal imagination of Chinese real estate as a spiritual substance. Looking beyond the notoriously unaffordable cities, we identify Hegang for its suspended sense of future marked by its socioeconomic impasse, and expulsion from circuits of capital and care of the state.

Paper long abstract:

Through ethnography conducted with home buyers of very affordable apartments in Hegang who were predominantly second-generation migrant workers attempting to flee the socioeconomic marginalisation in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. We argue homeownership marks not simply a fetish but a messianic or sacred futurity (it is near impossible to afford one in first-tier cities)—once achieved prematurely without the presupposed hardship of mortgage, the sanctity of real estate is profaned. China’s precarious housing market has predominantly been observed in terms of land politics, urban governance, financial speculation, and class dynamics (e.g., Hsing 2010; Zhang 2010; Glaeser et al. 2017). Yet at this historical juncture where housing in large cities has been largely unaffordable for at least of the past decade, and the real estate bubble is at the brink of bursting, we probe how, for young people at the economic bottom, housing became not just a matter of material subsistence but a totemic/spiritual symbol animating a prophetic imagination of the future in the face of perpetual precarity. As many new homebuyers have to face the realities of living in Hegang (e.g. finding a job) head-on, the sacrilegiously cheap housing price is the least of their concern. We also draw inspiration from earlier work on the concept of Sino-no-futurism (Zhang 2021) and how time is suspended at the rural-urban fringe. We observe a similar understanding of arrested temporality in Hegang as the stagnant or slowed time is rationalised as a valid outsideness from the capitalist realism of first-tier cities.