Ching Kwan Lee has written a brilliant ethnography, a detailed illumination of how Chinese state capital “goes out” and how this compares with global capital. Six years of fieldwork and unprecedented access to firms and government officials in Zambia allowed Lee to paint deeply nuanced case studies of the continent's newest major investor, grounded in comparisons with non-Chinese global firms (mainly from Switzerland, India and South Africa) in two sectors: mining and construction.
Lee asks “Is Chinese state capital a different kind of capital?” Her response is yes, compared with global private capital, but the differences she finds are often counterintuitive. Most importantly, she argues, global capital is driven by short-term profit goals. Chinese state capital adds to the logic of accumulation agendas of political and diplomatic influence, and in the case of mining, secure access to strategic minerals. Because these firms’ agendas include but go beyond profit, they are more willing to compromise to accommodate the demands of the Zambian state and labour. In mining, this willingness led China's state-owned copper firm to build two special economic zones, allowing Zambia to add value to its raw copper exports. In construction, however, given widespread rent-seeking, the same combination of economic and political logic created “a predatory and pernicious threat to Zambia's long-term solvency” (p. 29).
Lee's fortuitous friendship with Guy Scott, a Zambian politician of British descent who became vice-president in 2011, opened the doors of the mining companies. Months of participant observation fieldwork at Chinese, Indian and Swiss mines allow Lee to speak with authority about key differences among these varieties of capital. As a sociologist with a firm grasp of global trends, Lee situates the practices she observes within the particular moment of global capitalism. The Zambian state's diminished role in mining and labour's weakness are both the result of the pressure for privatization and labour flexibility imposed by international financial institutions during Zambia's previous debt crisis in the 1990s. The Chinese (and the other firms in the study) did not create these conditions.
Mining is the centrepiece of the book and Lee takes us deep underground. Despite media and human rights organizations perceptions that the Chinese were “the worst,” Lee tells us that all three mines were “hot, dark, and dangerous” (p. 57). Yet there were other differences: the Chinese mining company's emphasis on stability of production led to a labour regime with low wages but stable employment, while other firms paid higher wages but were also quicker to retrench workers when copper prices fell. By 2015, the steady long-term production focus of the Chinese miners compared with the short-term profit mentality of the other firms had won over Zambian mining experts, unions and government officials “who by then recognized it as one of the most stable and responsible producers and employers in the Zambian copper industry” (p. 31).
Lee's fourth chapter dives into the managerial ethos: the cultural conditioning of capital's agents on the ground. The comparison of Chinese “collective asceticism” (commonly known as “eating bitterness”) with the expatriate “individualistic careerism” among other multinational firms anchors the analysis. In surprising ways, conditions for the Chinese experts in Lee's study have changed little from the Chinese experts I studied in West Africa in the 1980s. Their simple group accommodations continue to fuel rumours that Chinese workers were sent from prisons. Lee of course debunks that myth, but shows how for younger Chinese experts, the absence of family life and impersonal barracks-like accommodations made their stay feel like prison. She also reports that Chinese managers continue to be more egalitarian than those from other nations. The CEO joined the lunch line, line managers worked alongside African workers; engineers got their hands dirty. As one construction worker concluded: “Though they offer bad working conditions… they taught me many trades. Because of the Chinese, I have enhanced my skills further in bricklaying, carpentry and steel fixing” (p. 121).
The fifth chapter addresses local and transnational efforts to pressure, resist and change the activities of Chinese and other global firms. Lee concludes that there was yet little to distinguish Chinese state capital from global private capital in terms of local protests or labour resistance. However, she notes, given that Chinese state capital must meet diplomatic and political as well as business goals, they would likely respond were African states to join with their societies in a reform agenda. The ball is in the African court.
This superb book stands alone as a detailed ethnography of China's outbound foreign investment in comparative perspective. It is beautifully written, packed with insights, arresting imagery and convincing analysis. A book like this offers an exciting model of scholarship that should inspire doctoral students and might even prod more sedentary professors to invest the time required for this depth of understanding.
