Why do Chinese–Zambian encounters so often entail misunderstandings, mutual suspicion and perceptions of insurmountable difference? Why is it seemingly impossible for Chinese migrants to establish sustainable friendships with Zambians? In Affective Encounters, Di Wu offers an explanation for a phrase he heard frequently among his Chinese interlocutors in Zambia: “They are difficult to communicate with” (he tamen jiaoliu hen kunnan). The author leverages his unique positionality to provide an intimate rendering of everyday Chinese migrant life, an aspect of China–Africa relations neglected in the existing English-language literature. Committed to providing a “Chinese perspective” (p. 21), Wu conducts fine-grained analyses of micro-sociological interactions he witnessed over 16 months of fieldwork at two Chinese-run farms in Lusaka. Moreover, he draws on Chinese philosophical traditions to make a convincing case for the centrality of emotion in Chinese sociality, indicating Chinese theorizations as correctives to the shortcomings of contemporary anthropological affect theory.
The book opens with an Introduction detailing the author's field sites and methodological orientation in the context of a brief history of China–Africa relations, as well as a theoretical discussion of emotion in Chinese social formation. Chapter one analyses practices of “everyday exclusivism,” in which Chinese migrants separated themselves from Zambians – both physically, through fences and locked doors, and discursively, through racialized language and anxious rumours. Contrary to the conventional narrative of Chinese in Africa as powerful neo-colonizers, Wu shows how his interlocutors experienced an overriding sense of vulnerability (p. 45), and he interprets their anxiety toward Zambia and Zambians as an extension of traditional conceptual distinctions between a safe “inside” (family) and a dangerous “outside” (society) (p. 70). Chapter two examines suspicion and mistrust in collaborations between Chinese actors. Rather than taking “the Chinese community in Zambia” as a given formation, Wu emphasizes the pervasiveness of factions (p. 85) and examines the complex affective processes by which groups are formed. Adding historicization and nuance to the guanxi scholarship, he argues that, because his interlocutors perceived guanxi and gift-giving as having become highly instrumentalized in China, they emphasized jiaoqing, or “interactional affection” (p. 91), rather than ganqing (emotion) or renqing (human feeling), as the basis for sustainable business or social relationships. In chapter three, attention shifts to labour relations between Chinese managers and Zambian employees. Supplementing structural analyses of labour exploitation, Wu shows how his Zambian and Chinese interlocutors held diverging expectations about how bosses and workers should demonstrate affection and care within relations of dependence (p. 109) – a conflict in what he calls “direction of attentiveness” (pp. 113, 116).
The last two chapters elaborate the author's theoretical contributions. Chapter four focuses on several Chinese youth, born in the 1980s or 1990s, who undergo moral transformations in the process of becoming “bosses” or “leaders” (pp. 134–35). Besides highlighting the significance of this generation in contemporary China–Africa migration, Wu draws a connection between his interlocutors’ struggles to properly embody managerial roles and the concept of self-cultivation in Confucian virtue ethics. He urges anthropologists of ethics to take seriously long-standing discussions in Chinese philosophy around interactional morality and virtue as a process of becoming (pp. 154–55). In his final substantive chapter, Wu traces the relationship between speech, affect, and sociality by examining how Chinese migrants at his field site valorized the capacity to “speak appropriately,” especially through mastery of everyday practices like indirect speech and contextualization (p. 163). Despite its acknowledged significance in Chinese social life, speech, he points out, has been largely neglected by anthropologists of China. He introduces the notion of “speech capital” (p. 184) to show how speech can be mobilized for personal strategic ends in the workplace or in business negotiations, and he argues that a lack of shared communicative practices is a crucial reason for misunderstandings in Chinese–Zambian interactions.
Wu's detailed ethnographic vignettes add a human dimension to characters often hastily vilified in journalistic accounts of Chinese migrants in Africa. He meticulously interprets the subtlest of actions, effectively reproducing emotions such as the sentimentality of a banquet speech or the frustration of a workplace dispute. The author's intimate familiarity with Chinese vocabulary, idioms and cultural references provides a depth of analysis that would not have been possible for an ethnographer less fluent in the Chinese language. At the same time, Wu's self-reflexivity is evident throughout: he admits confusion upon hearing certain words or phrases, and he remarks upon when and why he was finally able to grasp their meanings.
Wu's study offers important contributions not only to research on China–Africa relations, but also to the literature on emotion and social relations in China, and to anthropological discussions of affect, morality and ethics. Perhaps surprisingly, this book does not thoroughly analyse (1) labour exploitation and the broader political economic structure of which Chinese migrants in Zambia are a part; or (2) Chinese racism toward Zambians. The author makes a provocative point that narratives condemning the extractive and exploitative aspects of “China in Africa” may be “too ‘morally right’ to be true” (p. 106), and he emphasizes that recounting and analysing racialized discourses is not equivalent to endorsing them (p. 194). However, one is left wondering whether a study of micro-level social interactions must be done at the expense of a structural analysis of inequality. Nonetheless, and especially because of the prevalence of oversimplified criticisms of Chinese activities in Africa, Di Wu's ethnography would be particularly valuable to scholars and students interested in the emotional complexity of Chinese–African encounters.
