Chinese Capital Accumulation and the Belt and Road Initiative
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. Based on their long-term research, this lecture's two speakers will characterize China’s presence in the world, especially in developing countries.
The speakers are Prof. YAN Hairong (Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China) and Prof. CHEN Yiyuan (College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China).
Everyone is welcome to attend this public, in-person lecture in the IIAS Conference Room from 14:00 to 15:30 hrs. Due to limited seating, registration is required.
The Lecture
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, specifically through case studies of key BRI countries, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka. We will also discuss capital accumulation in the agrarian sector within China.
The Speakers
YAN Hairong, Professor at Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities and Social Sciences and Department of Sociology (Beijing, China). Her earlier book, New Masters, New Servants: Migration, Development, and Women Workers in China, focused on rural-to-urban migrant domestic workers in urban China. She thus examined the transformation of rural-urban relations, gender relations, and class relations in China's reform process. In recent decades, she has become concerned with China's agrarian change and has contributed to China's food sovereignty network. For the past two decades, she has also collaborated with Barry Sautman on China-Africa links and co-authored East Mountain Tiger, West Mountain Tiger: China, Africa, the West and "Colonialism", and, in Chinese, China in Africa: Discourse and Practices.
CHEN Yiyuan is a Professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University (Beijing, China). Her research interests include China's agrarian change, rural development and the food sovereignty movement. She has published over 30 articles in Chinese and international academic journals, including the Journal of Agrarian Change and the Journal of Peasant Studies.
Registration (required)
Everyone is welcome, but we kindly ask you to register as seating is limited.