China's deepening engagement with the developing world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, has aroused discussion about whether it would contribute to the continent's development. This article investigates whether China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and private investments help Africa industrialize through the lens of technology transfer in Ethiopia. Case studies demonstrate that both Chinese state-owned firms and private ventures are motivated to transfer skills through on-the-job training for local laborers and technicians. However, technology transfer is largely motivated by corporate principles of profit and quality, rather than by development or Third World solidarity as in the days of Mao. Overall, technology transfer occurs through three technopolitical regimes, each characterized by varying levels of agency, alignment of intentions, and industrial contexts. It is slow and narrow and is inextricably linked to power struggles and labor relations between Africans and Chinese.
This article examines the significant transformation in the presence and operational mode of Chinese state medical teams in Africa. Based on archival research and fieldwork conducted in China and Zimbabwe, we argue that China's medical assistance to Africa has undergone substantial reconfiguration under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Historically rooted in Cold War revolutionary ideology- embodied by the spirit of Canadian communist doctor Norman Bethune, who died while serving Chinese troops in 1939, these medical teams now increasingly focus on addressing the healthcare needs of China's expanding diaspora, reflecting China's deepening economic and industrial engagement across the continent. This transformation involves collaboration with a range of diaspora actors, including Chinese enterprises, business communities and the Confucius Institute, to provide culturally attuned healthcare for Chinese diaspora while projecting soft power through the practice of traditional Chinese medicine. More broadly, this marks a discursive transition from the discourse of Third World solidarity and revolutionary internationalism to one centered on diaspora mobilization and healthcare governance, particularly in resource-rich African states where Chinese economic interests are most deeply entrenched.
Recent decades of China's global rise have shifted scholarly attention away from traditional Chinese mass migration to the West toward Chinese entrepreneurial diasporic activities in the Global South. Rather than centering assimilation and adaptation to host societies, contemporary transnational Chinese communities increasingly engage with China's expanding global political and economic influence. Against the backdrop of the Belt and Road Initiative, China's global ascent has enabled the commodification of Chineseness, with state-linked enclaves and industrial zones embodying its overseas strategic outreach. Conventional frameworks and narratives derived from Western experiences of Chinese transnational migration are therefore insufficient to grasp the complex realities of globalizing China. This special issue advances the conceptualization of global China by transcending the analytical binary between the nation-state and its overseas diaspora. Based on empirical evidence from Africa, the Middle East, and Chinese migrant-origin regions, the contributors investigate how China's deepening globalization reshapes transnational migration, medical diplomacy, diasporic entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and governance. The findings collectively illuminate the interplay between top-down state strategies and bottom-up diasporic agency. They further reveal how evolving state-private dynamics spill across national borders to shape China's global presence.
This article examines the evolution of Taiwan Studies on the Chinese mainland from the early 1980s to the mid-2020s as a distinctive field of state-embedded area knowledge. Drawing on a bibliometric analysis of articles published in leading Taiwan-focused journals, together with institutional and historical evidence, it provides the first English-language longitudinal mapping of the field's development. The analysis shows that mainland Taiwan Studies has expanded significantly through the establishment of specialized research institutes, academic journals, graduate training programs, and policy-oriented think tanks. At the same time, the field exhibits four durable characteristics: disciplinary asymmetry, geographic concentration, thematic centralization, and institutional dualism. These are reflected in the dominance of political science and international relations, the concentration of research output in Fujian and Beijing, the centrality of cross-Taiwan Strait relations as the organizing theme, and a dual-track institutional structure linking universities and policy-oriented think tanks. While these features have facilitated rapid institutionalization, they have also shaped the field's intellectual boundaries and developmental constraints. The article argues that mainland
This article examines how Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been institutionalized in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since the 1980s by situating its development within the intersecting logics of urban branding, market-driven cosmopolitanism, and global health diplomacy. Rather than treating TCM as a simple export of Chinese culture under the "Health Silk Road" initiative, the article argues that TCM in the UAE, a prominent regional node in the global healthcare market, is co-produced through the interplay of Chinese state promotion, local regulatory regimes, urban development strategies, and consumer markets. Drawing on field observations, interviews with business owners, practitioners, and patients, and analysis of regulatory and promotional materials, the study maps the uneven spatial distribution of TCM facilities across the urban centers in the UAE. It shows that variations in state-market dynamics strongly shape TCM's institutional development, commercial orientation, and professional legitimacy. By combining spatial analysis with ethnographic insight, this article shows that TCM in the UAE is not merely transplanted but selectively embedded, negotiated, and reconfigured through local urban hierarchies and global flows of capital and culture. More broadly, it demonstrates how medical pluralism in the UAE is embedded in the political economy of global cities, where urban governance, market forces, and transnational flows shape everyday healthcare decision-making.
