Grounding Chinese investment: encounters between Chinese capital and local land politics in Laos

Abstract

Mainstream portrayals of Chinese overseas land investments tend to treat Chinese capital as monolithic, synonymous with the Chinese state, and extracting resources from other countries unhindered. These portrayals flatten host country landscapes where investment occurs, obscure the embeddedness and diversity of Chinese investors, and ignore the spatially contingent channels through which Chinese capital, actors, and goods flow. In response, this article suggests that methodological shifts in the land grabs literature could address recent calls for grounding studies of global China. It compares the cases of Chinese banana and rubber investments in Laos to demonstrate that sub-national state actors, histories and material realities of land politics, and the diversity of investors across sectors and regions must be considered. The contrast between how the two types of Chinese agricultural investments have been established and governed is best understood through comparative, grounded research attentive to multiple perspectives and scales.

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