Is Chinese state capital a different kind of capital? Ching Kwan Lee tackles this critical question through a six-year-long ethnographic study, comparing Chinese state capital with global private capital in two different sectors in Zambia: copper and construction. Far from the simplistic and often alarmist Western discourse depicting China in Africa as a neocolonial power, merely interested in exploiting resources, and far from Beijing's rosy picturing of the relationship as win–win cooperation between Southern brothers, Lee provides an empirically rich and nuanced account of Chinese investment in Africa. The book adds to Deborah Bräutigam's 2009 and 2015 work, as well as Lucy Corkin's 2013 study, which also present a more complex reality about China in Africa than is usually conveyed in public media.
Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical framework. One of the book's most important theoretical contributions is the distinction it makes between varieties of capitalism and varieties of capital. The ‘varieties of capitalism’ framework traces capital back to the institutional context from which it emanates. It has been widely used in the literature to analyse Chinese investments abroad. However, the author argues that this type of path-dependent, institutional theorizing fails to recognize the central role played by local politics in capital-recipient countries and the eventful nature of capitalism. The ‘varieties of capitalism’ literature falls short of explaining the divergent impact of Chinese capital abroad (p. 10). Instead, the author suggests theorizing varieties of capital and its engagement with local politics and international pressures, as this provides a more appropriate framework for understanding the challenges and opportunities capitalism presents. The book is structured around an analysis of capital in three key moments: accumulation, production and ethos. It analyses the level of social embeddedness and contestation each moment generates (p. 11).
Chapter 2 discusses the accumulation imperatives of capital. Lee demonstrates that Chinese state capital, with its broader logic of accumulation – in the sense that it seeks not only profit but also political influence and mineral access – is more accommodating of Zambian demands than global private capital. The author advances the argument that the impact of capital depends on the capacity of the Zambian government to leverage it (p. 47). Strategic demands from the Zambian political elite in the copper sector forced Chinese state capital to take a few market-defying decisions, such as the creation of two special economic zones. Yet the absence of a developmental vision in the construction sector on the Zambian side led Chinese state capital to act in a predatory way, risking the return of long-term indebtedness (p. 53).
Chapter 3 examines how the two types of capital generate different regimes of production. It deconstructs the widespread perception of Chinese capital as inherently more exploitative than other types of capital for African labour. Lee makes the compelling argument that the permissive environment for labour exploitation was externally imposed by international financial institutions through structural adjustment reforms in the 1990s. When foreign investors, both Chinese and non-Chinese, arrived in Zambia, they merely took advantage of an already liberalized labour law regime (p. 60). However, driven by different imperatives, the two types of capital adopted different strategies to deal with miners, with Chinese state-owned firms offering more stable contracts than the more mobile, finance-driven, global private capital, which had the tendency to retrench and exclude labour as the first response to market volatility (p. 78). In construction, the mobile and temporary nature of the sector undermined the capacity of labour to influence capital, whether state-owned or private (p. 84).
Chapter 4 depicts organizational and cultural aspects of the Chinese managerial ethos and contrasts these with the managerial ethos of non-Chinese expatriates in mining and construction. It holds that Chinese state capital had access to a more controlled and disciplined management, driven by a sense of ‘collective asceticism’, or what the Chinese themselves call ‘eating bitterness’, in contrast to the more individualistic and careerist management of global private capital. Unlike Weber's designation of religion as the source of the capitalist work ethic, the author argues that the Chinese concept of eating bitterness is driven by a sense of nationalism, promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (p. 94). The chapter illustrates the harsh and isolating living arrangements of the Chinese compared with other expatriates and the tensions arising from the different work cultures of Chinese and Zambian employees (p. 111).
Looking at grass-roots counter-movements’ attempts to embed capital, Chapter 5 provides a more detailed account of Zambian workers’ aspirations and their capacity for contestation. Of the various forms of resistance to capital, Lee finds that only local and direct actions by workers and communities were able to increase salaries and improve working conditions (p. 138). Yet strikes and organized labour movements had weakened in recent years. Fragmentation among workers, along with the emerging culture of petty ‘entrepreneurship’, meant that individual strategies for survival had become more popular than collective struggles. This suggests that labour actions are unlikely to make either Chinese state capital or foreign private capital responsive to popular aspirations.
The final chapter restates the main finding of the book: Chinese state capital was more accommodating of Zambian demands than the more mobile global private capital due to its multidimensional agenda that went beyond sheer profit maximization (p. 154). The chapter relates the study's arguments to other studies on Chinese state investments in Africa and Latin America. It concludes that Chinese state capital can offer varied and uneven development opportunities and perils depending on the capacity of local structures to put pressure on it. The book ends by challenging the current methodological tools of Chinese studies, arguing that the study of global China requires moving out of China's geographical boundaries and adopting new empirical, theoretical and methodological instruments.
While most accounts of China in Africa tend to take Africa's powerlessness in the relationship for granted, this book provides a refreshing narrative highlighting how local resistance forced Chinese capital to change. However, the book lacks some depth in analysing the Zambian state. In Chapter 1, the author uncritically accepts the concept of patrimonialism, describing the African state as a ‘patrimonial and predatory vehicle of underdevelopment, notorious for its rampant corruption and dictatorial “Big Man” rule’ (p. 17). This theorization of the state fails to explain the developmental efforts perceived in the copper sector compared with construction. The use of patrimonialism obscures the diverse range of motivations and ideological preferences shaping policy choices and performance in different sectors. The book would have gained from using some of the insights of the growing body of literature on political settlements in Africa, which accounts for the existence of pockets of efficiency in seemingly patrimonial states. Despite this caveat, the book remains a particularly robust theoretical and empirical contribution to understanding China in Africa and will thus be a must-read for scholars and students of development, China and Africa, and for anyone interested in global capitalism.
