Chinese Investment and Settlement in Africa

Professor Ching Kwan Lee will speak on the Sino-African relationship at UC Santa Barbara.

Ching Kwan Lee's Bio:

I am currently working on two projects. One is on the politics of rights and changing citizenship regime in China. I am looking at the effects of three major national laws respectively giving citizens labor rights, land rights, and property rights. By examining how ordinary Chinese mobilize legal and extra-legal resources to battle for their rights as citizens, forging new notions of property, labor and land, engaging the local and central governments, I want to understand the micro-foundations or the lack thereof, for the formation of new citizenship regimes in China.

The second project I am working on is Chinese investment and labor practices in Zambia, a major copper producer and the site of the first of several Chinese-run Special Economic Zones in sub-Saharan Africa. I want to understand the mechanisms of accumulation and domination of Chinese capital as well as its limits imposed by local politics, class and race relations. This study involves a double comparison: between copper and construction; and between Chinese and non-Chinese investors in one country.