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Abstract
This article draws on the theory and recent research on ‘ecological disorganization’- defined as ‘the ways in which human preferences for organizing economic production consistent with the objectives of capitalism are an inherent contradiction with the health of the ecological system’- to explore the ‘corporate violence’ apropos of Chinese investment in Africa. In line with other ecological disorganization theorists, we show how the deployment of Chinese capital in Africa structures and reproduces subjectivation, but also how, ultimately, this subjectivation is implicated in Africa’s ecological disorganization.
Notes
1. For example, Lazzarato, The Indebted Man; Kovel, The Enemy of Nature; Foster, Clark and York, The Ecological Rift.
2. Klein, No Logo; Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality; Ruggiero, Crimes of the Economy.
3. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality.
4. Gros, Trouble in Paradise.
5. White, Transnational Environmental Crime.
6. Ruggiero and South, Green Criminology and Crimes.
7. White, Transnational Environmental Crime.
8. Lynch, Reflection on criminology and its boundaries.
9. Lynch and Stretesky, Is it a Crime.
10. Foster, Clark and York, The Ecological Rift.
11. Lazzarato, The Indebted Man.
12. Zizek, Trouble in Paradise.
13. In Marxian analysis, the amount of profit is partially determined by the rate of surplus value and partially determined by expanding production by increasing the volume of goods produced and sold.
14. Burkett, Marxism and Ecological Economics.
15. Schnaiberg, The Environment.
16. Lynch and Stretesky, Is it a Crime, 1003
17. Schnaiberg, The Environment, 1.
18. White, Transnational Environmental Crime, argues that members of a state’s capitalist class are usually the culprits.
19. A third synthesis is an ecological one, where the state emphases use-values (including the value of preservation of existing species and habitats) over exchange-values.
23. Zizek, Trouble in Paradise.
26. Lazzarato, The Indebted Man.
27. Moyo, Dead aid; Wrong, It’s our turn to eat.
28. Lazzarato, The Indebted Man, 8.
29. Zizek, Violence.
30. Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur.
31. Ncube, Leyeka and Ndikumana, Chinese Trade and Investment; Shen, How the Private Sector.
32. These loans tend to go to resource-rich countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana and are usually repaid by shipping natural resources to China. These loans are not FDI; they are commercial deals, albeit often with a concessionary loan component. .
33. Gu, China’s Private Enterprises in Africa.
34. Moyo, Beijing, a Boon for Africa.
35. The bulk of China’s FDI has been concentrated in a relatively few countries. Between 2003 and 2007, five countries – Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Algeria and Zambia – accounted for more than 70% of China’s FDI.
36. Chinese investment is not limited to public investments, however. Privately-owned Huawei and publicly-traded ZTE have become the principal telecommunications providers in a number of African countries where, while most of their activity is sales, their operations are so large in some countries that they have established huge local offices.
37. Because Western companies began investing in Africa much earlier, their cumulative investments far exceed China’s FDI in Africa.
38. Brautigam, The Dragon’s Gift.
39. Downs, Fact and Fiction of Sino-African.
40. Kobylinski, Chinese Investment in Africa.
41. Kobylinski, China’s Investments in Africa.
42. Konings, China and Africa.
43. Moyo, Dead aid.
44. Kobylinski , China’s Investments in Africa.
45. Moyo, Beijing, a Boon for Africa.
47. One needs to recognise that the Chinese government imposes no political conditions on African governments before signing contracts either for exploration or other economic activities. Furthermore, Chinese firms are willing to invest where Western companies are unwilling.
48. Haroz, China in Africa.
49. Teddy, African Companies in Fear.
50. Malone, How China’s Taking over Africa.
51. Ibid.
52. Malone argues that China, whose population has more than trebled from five hundred million to one billion over five decades has forced Beijing to enter bilateral trade with Africa, with the ambition of offloading about three hundred million of its nationals to Africa.
53. Haroz, China in Africa.
54. Malone, How China’s Taking over Africa.
56. As a result of such direct threats (to its labourers in Africa), China has significantly ramped up its contribution to United Nation peace-keeping forces in Sudan, although it has been involved longer than is assumed
58. Taylor, Unpacking China’s Resource Diplomacy.
59. Hilson and Porter, Structural Adjustment and the Subsistence Industry.
60. Yakubu, Towards Sustainable Small-Scale Mining.
61. Hilson, Child Labour in African Artisanal Mining.
62. Ofori-Atta, Galamsey.
63. Hilson, Child Labour in African Artisanal Mining; Hirsch, Influx of Chinese Goldminers.
64. Hirsch, Influx of Chinese Goldminers.
65. The people of Tarkwa in western region and Kyebi in eastern region are very much prone to neurological diseases, according to WHO.
66. Hilson and Porter, Structural Adjustment and Subsistence Industry.
67. There are similar stories elsewhere. In Zimbabwe, where (Chinese-funded) artisanal mining is also common, about 100,000 hectares of land has been lost to illegal (diamond) mining in the Maranga region.
68. Ntibrey, Small-Scale Mining.
69. Read, Ghana’s Gold Loses its Lustre.
70. Antwi, A livelihood approach in Ghana.
71. Hilson and Porter, Structural Adjustment and Subsistence Industry.
72. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality.