Pandemics and food consumption have long been racialised against non-Western peoples. Yellow Peril tropes of Chinese as disease vectors and consumers of 'weird' wildlife, such as bats, were conjoined again with COVID-19. US politicians and media have especially deployed these themes to blame Chinese for the pandemic, alongside tropes of Chinese as cruel, deceitful incompetents, thus serving a wider mobilisation against China that fuels a new Cold War and anti-Asian attacks. Wildlife consumption as a spur to COVID's Wuhan outbreak is, however, an unverified supposition. Many societies consume wildlife, but it was uncommon in China and mostly shunned by the time of COVID-19's onset. Meanwhile, significant US wildlife consumption continues. Yellow Peril racialisation of the pandemic and demonisation of China also continue, both despite and because of Western politicians' COVID-19 failings.

The idea that China is the supreme overseas capital accumulator is part of a discourse of China as colonialist or neocolonialist. The discourse exists not because Chinese behaviour aligns with scholarly understandings of colonialism or neocolonialism, but as a rhetorical device to discredit China as the US's 'strategic rival'. In this paper we show that China does not practice colonialism or neocolonialism and examine the question of how China's activities fit into modes of globalised capital accumulation abroad. We argue that China's mode overlaps, but is also distinct from, the East Asian developmental states' approach. It is even more dissimilar to the US's archetypal neoliberalism. Two areas in which China most diverges are its deployment of state-owned enterprises and Communist Party of China leadership, and the concomitant alignment of Chinese firms overseas with home and host-state policies. In analysing Chinese capital accumulation abroad, we adumbrate a Chinese mode that reflects 'two semis': China's semi-peripheral status and its semi-neoliberalism.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mobilizes Chinese construction and investment in developing countries. Ethiopia is Africa's "model" BRI country, due to China's elaborate infrastructure financing and building and its many manufacturing enterprises. Based on field and documentary research, we examine the BRI's meaning, as understood from the perspective of Ethiopia, in comparison to many China-oriented studies. We find that it is an informal Chinese state promise that even when capital flows from China to non-BRI states are curbed, flows to BRI states will be encouraged, and that Ethiopia exercises agency in leveraging the BRI for its development agenda. Using a comprehensive data set, we show that Chinese investment has become even more important in Ethiopia with the BRI and that neither COVID-19 nor Ethiopia's civil war has reversed that trend. We also discuss local criticisms of Chinese activities, which challenge the wholly positive view of the BRI, but do not affirm the US-generated negative narrative.

常常有评论认为,由于中国人的族群中心主义,在非洲的中国人"自我封闭",与当地社会缺乏互动.这样的评论突出了中国人"自我封闭"的特殊性,却没有把在非洲的中国人与其他外来族群相比.我们认为,由于中国经济的半外围特征,当代中国人在非洲并不具有同质性,因此不能一言概之.利用问卷调查、访谈和文献数据,本文分析了中国人在非洲的居住、社会化和语言习得情况,并区分了中国人的两种流动:合同流动和自我流动.除了流动的方式外,影响中国人"本地化"的因素还包括当地政治环境、移民的早晚、语言障碍以及企业规章制度等.我们认为,大多数在非中国人不是自我封闭的,而且与其他在非的亚洲和白人移民相比,本地化程度并不低.

Hairong Yan is an associate professor of the Department of Applied Social Science at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She specializes in politics of development, China– Africa links, rural-urban relations, socialism and cooperative economy, and agrarian change in China. Due to the global pandemic, all work has gone digital, including this conversation. In this interview, Dr Yan offered her insights on China’s location in the current world system, China’s involvements inAfrica, and thepossibility of aGlobal South solidarity. What’s more, she also shares her experiences of teaching Global China and China–Africa engagements in Hong Kong – a postcolonial Chinese city whose population is still trying to work out its relationships with its colonial past, the West and the Chinese mainland.

Rural development in the Chinese state's strategy has been a changing political-economic problematic. The state has practiced a strategic essentialism with regard to ‘peasantry.' It has actively taken ‘peasantry' as a temporary unifying master-category while at the same time working with the differences within the category for the long-term goal of transformation. The post-Mao contradiction, emphasizing the protection of the ‘peasantry’ while encouraging differentiation, offers contemporary struggles both opportunity and frustration. This essay examines how the rural has been conceptualized in reform-era policies and discusses two cases of scholar activism, the rural reconstruction movement and the food sovereignty network in China.

Chinese mining in Africa has been widely misconceived in terms of scale and characteristics. Based on research and fieldwork in Zambia’s Copper-Cobalt Belt from 2007 to 2015, we find that Chinese mining firms in Africa exploit resources and labor in much the same way that non-Chinese companies do. Chinese firms have distinctive features, however. We dispute the centerpiece of the discourse on Chinese mining in Africa, a 2011 report on Chinese copper mining in Zambia by Human Rights Watch, and show the report is empirically inaccurate and conceptually flawed. Chinese mining in Africa is not what Human Rights Watch claims it to be, but that does not mean that all is well. Fundamental problems exist and pertain to mining generally and mining in Africa specifically. Our 2014 survey of mine workers in Zambia found that the overwhelming majority see national ownership of mining assets as beneficial for overall development in Zambia and for the livelihood of mineworkers.

The purpose of this special issue is to advance heterodox reconstructions of agrarian Marxism on the occasion of Marx's 200th birth anniversary. Scholarship on the origins of agrarian capitalism and the contrasts between agrarian and industrial capitalism have been a vital part of debates over and within Marxism for more than a century and have been central to the social scientific and historical understandings of the modern world system. At the same time, since the seminal debates associated with the classical agrarian question,' agrarian studies is marked by durable tensions and polarities in theoretical approach. While Marxists have long criticized populists' for ignoring capitalism and class, populists have charged Marxists with historical determinism. It is the premise of this special issue that much of this debate has reached something of an impasse. This is in part because new empirical work addressing the complex contemporary patterns and conjunctures of global agrarian capitalism, and because new and generative theoretical reconstructions of Marxism itself, offer exciting new horizons. Contributions to this special issue help point the way beyond this impasse, and illustrate that agrarian Marxism remains a dynamic theoretical program that offers powerful insights into agrarian change and politics in the twenty-first century.

Chinese are often said to 'self-segregate' in Africa. Chinese ethnocentricity is typically offered as an explanation for the putative non-interaction. Meanwhile Chinese are not compared to other non-indigenous people in Africa, implying unique Chinese self-isolation. Due to China's semi-peripheral dynamics however, the contemporary Chinese presence in Africa cannot be generalized into a single category. Based on surveys, interviews, and documents, we examine the varied presence of Chinese in Africa, including residential patterns acquisition of local African languages, and socialization patterns, and draw distinctions between Chinese expatriates and Chinese migrants. Factors affecting Chinese adaptation include local political environment, recentness of migration, language barriers, and corporate policies to mitigate crime and conflict. We argue that most Chinese in Africa are not self-isolated and not more isolated in Africa than are other Asian migrants and whites there. Claims of Chinese self-isolation reflect a longstanding, global Yellow Peril discourse that persists despite discrediting evidence.

In her book Land’s End (Duke University Press, 2014), Tania Murray Li1 examines how capitalist relations emerged among indigenous highlanders in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The book details the process th...

中国企业在非洲是否本土化,是否以雇佣当地劳工为主,是一个具有政治影响的国际性的话题.西方,特别是美国的政客媒体,常常宣称中国公司在非洲喜欢用自己人,不实行本土化,原因不是中国公司有“民族中心主义”,就是拒绝本土化更有利可图,或者两者兼有.在201 4年美国和非洲的峰会上,美国政客口径非常一致,总统奥巴马提醒非洲领导人,“要确保,如果中国再修桥建路的话,第一,他们要雇佣非洲工人”.副总统拜登则说:“美国很自豪,我们在非洲的投资与我们努力雇佣和培训非洲劳工同步,以促进当地经济发展,我们并不只是采掘地下的资源.”

Interviewers' note: Land reform in Zimbabwe has caught the world's attention. It's condemned by the mainstream in the West. It has also been highly controversial in South Africa, as post-apartheid South Africa has been unable to address the historical legacy of severe land inequality. What we find interesting and intriguing is that the land reform in Zimbabwe occurred at a time when neo-liberalism was raging in the world. What has been the historical and political context and dynamics of the land reform in Zimbabwe? Doe it bear any relationship with the earlier land reforms in some former colonial and semi-colonial countries around the mid-20th century? What are its implications for the understanding and challenging the current world system? On 19 April 2015, we had an opportunity to discuss these questions in person with Zimbabwe-based Sam Moyo, a leading agrarian political economist and a critical thinker in Africa. He was attending the Hangzhou Forum of Bandung/Third World 60 Years.

A race' and labour conjunction has been theorized based on Global North investment in the Global South. Chinese enterprising in Africa allows us to analyse it in a South-South setting. Contrary to dominant discourses, Chinese employers are not the sole racializers of the African/Chinese interface. Chinese and Africans, employers and employees, as well as Western actors, co-constitute racialization, with varied consequences for each. Rhetorical racialization of African employees by some Chinese employers and African employee and politicians' racialization of Chinese, show that South-South racializations of labour markedly differ from the North-South exemplar.

关于种族和劳工交织的论述到目前为止都是以北方国家在南方国家投资为场景.本文首次以中国在非洲的投资为场景讨论“种族化”以及“劳工种族化”的问题.西方主流媒体希望告诉世人,“中国在非洲”是单向的种族化,即中国人对非洲人的种族化.实际上种族化在中非交往中不是单向的、单元的,也不是中非之间双向的、二元的,而是包含西方主流的、有多方社会行动者参与的复杂图景.在非洲的部分中国人在话语上有“种族化”非洲人、非洲劳工的行为,但是中资企业在制度和管理上没有西方在全球南部国家常有的“劳工种族化”.中非之间日益广泛的接触是否会导致话语层面劳工种族化的恶化或缓解,是否会出现企业制度和管理上的种族化,则尚待进一步的观察.

Lester Brown sounded an alarm in 1995: who will feed China? Against this backdrop, this contribution examines China's dramatic turn from having been a soybean net exporter, up until the mid-1990s, to being the biggest importer of genetically modified (GM) soybeans, since 2000. With China's growing soybean imports, domestic soybean production has experienced a drastic fall, creating an outcry about a 'soybean crisis' in China. This paper examines competing interpretations about China's soybean imports and how a wide arrange of heated debates and critical reflections have emerged about China's position in globalization, the role of the state in food security, the safety of GM foods, consumer rights, what constitutes scientific authority, and the power of transnational corporations. In these debates, Chinese critics have very different views about the US and South America, where significant GM soybeans are produced for export to China.

农村合作社运动正盛行中国,然而这种盛行背后却已存在诸多争议.有些人质疑是否应该提倡农民专业合作社;有些人则批评现今大部分合作社都是“假”合作社;还有些人提出应以日本、韩国和台湾地区的综合性农民协会作为仿效对象.这些争论既关乎农村合作社,但又不局限于农村合作社,实际上涉及了中国发展的道路之争.20世纪30年代,农村合作社在中国也曾风靡一时,与之相伴的则是知识分子对中国未来的激烈争辩.本文将比较两个时期的知识分子关于发展农村合作社的观点和争论,这不仅是因为,两次合作社运动在社会认知方面、社会性质的判断和社会改良诉求方面有可比之处,更是因为两次运动各自存在着的结构性困境.在中国农村迅速变迁的当下,对20世纪30年代那场论辩的回顾,可以给我们今天遇到的问题提供必要的启示.