Dancing to China's Tune: Understanding the Impacts of a Rising China through the Political-Ecology Framework

Introduction to Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 3/2017: Political Ecology of a Rising Chin

The Geopolitics of South-South Infrastructure Development: Chinese-financed energy projects in the global South

Debates around infrastructure tend to focus on the global North yet in the global South demand for infrastructure is huge and we see new and emergent actors engaged in finance and construction; China being preeminent among them. China’s interests in the global South have grown apace over the past decade, especially in terms of accessing resources and securing infrastructure deals. The role of Chinese banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in financing and building the projects reveals a blurring between geopolitical and commercial interests and processes. The paper situates China’s entry into the global South as part of a geopolitics that is simultaneously geoeconomic and interrogates these issues through case studies of Chinese-backed projects in Ghana and Cambodia. These projects are spatially and politically complex with China adopting a range of financing models – often including an element of resource swaps – in which bank finance is critical and marks the Chinese as different to western financiers. These international deals are secured at the political elite level and so by-pass established forms of national governance and accountability in the recipient countries, while the turnkey construction projects remain locally enclaved. The cases also show that wider developmental benefits are limited with ‘ordinary’ citizens – especially those in the rural areas - gaining relatively little from these major energy projects and the benefits accruing to urban-based elites

Dynamics of international aid in the Chinese context: a case study of the World Bank's Cixi Wetlands Project in Zhejiang Province

Environmental degradation in China, intensified by open-door reforms and industrialization, has been increasing at an alarming scale. Domestically, environmental governance has been poor, often due to institutional constraints and lack of “good practices.” However, recently there have been studies on how the “foreign factor” might have profound positive effects on capacity building in China and how international actors could lead to the successful introduction of good environmental governance. In this article, we present a study of a successful case: the World Bank Global Environmental Facility Cixi Wetlands project in Ningbo, China. The article examines the following: (a) the unique local context enabling the diffusion of international norms; (b) the factors which contribute to the World Bank's leverage role in restructuring local project governance; and (c) the changes in local environmental governance arising from the Bank's involvement. By evaluating this project, the article will demonstrate how the World Bank managed to introduce and socialize local actors into project-specific policy dialogues and procedures that enhanced local compliance with its international practices and standards

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)'s sustainable safeguard mechanism on energy projects

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was officially established by China in 2016 with one of the aims to develop energy infrastructure based on green and sustainable principles in Asia. To achieve that, AIIB has set forth safeguard policies, including the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) applied for funded projects and the AIIB Energy Sector Strategy, to guide its energy investments. However, the effects of the safeguard policies and further safeguard operations on the energy projects remain unknown. This study reviews AIIB's safeguard mechanism on energy projects, including the safeguard policies, assessment and management plans, and implementations of AIIB's energy projects. We find that AIIB's current safeguard mechanism on energy projects, in comparison with other established multilateral development banks (MDBs), is still at its beginning stage, which does not match its goal and promise on sustainable energy development in Asia

Bloated bodies and broken bricks: power, ecology, and inequality in the political economy of natural disaster recovery

Disaster recovery efforts form an essential component of coping with unforeseen events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and typhoons, some of which will only become more frequent or severe in the face of accelerated climate change. Most of the time, disaster recovery efforts produce net benefits to society. However, depending on their design and governance, some projects can germinate adverse social, political, and economic outcomes. Drawing from concepts in political economy, political ecology, justice theory, and critical development studies, this study first presents a conceptual typology revolving around four key processes: enclosure, exclusion, encroachment, and entrenchment. Enclosure refers to when disaster recovery transfers public assets into private hands or expand the roles of private actors into the public sphere. Exclusion refers to when disaster recovery limits access to resources or marginalize particular stakeholders in decision-making activities. Encroachment refers to when efforts intrude on biodiversity areas or contribute to other forms of environmental degradation. Entrenchment refers to when disaster recovery aggravates the disempowerment of women and minorities, or worsen concentrations of wealth and income inequality within a community. The study then documents the presence of these four inequitable attributes across four empirical case studies: Hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts in the United States, recovery efforts for the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, and the Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. It then offers three policy recommendations for analysts, program managers, and climate researchers at large: spreading risks via insurance, adhering to principles of free prior informed consent, and preventing damage through punitive environmental bonds. The political economy of disaster must be taken into account so that projects can maximize their efficacy and avoid marginalizing those most vulnerable to those very disasters

Evolving social capital and networks in the post‐disaster rebuilding process: the case of Typhoon Yolanda

Typhoon Yolanda brought major devastation to the local communities and infrastructure and also reshaped social structures and networks in the Philippines. During the immediate recovery process, bridging, bonding and linking social capital have had differential impacts and outcomes on how communities cope with the aftermath of the disaster. This paper investigates the interplay between the various types of social capital and their contributions to immediate coping strategies of Typhoon Yolanda communities. This paper also evaluates the complexity of defining social capital in a disaster context. In particular, it unpacks the blurring of the bridging and linking social capital at the immediate stage of rehabilitation in a post disaster context and its impacts on the social fabric of the communities. We deduce from this case study the social capital strategies necessary for a speedy recovery process both economically and socially for disaster-affected communities

Poverty Alleviation in the Wake of Typhoon Yolanda Workshop Findings: Working Paper I

The following observations are drawn from the opening workshop of the ESRC/DFID funded project (Ref: ES/M008932/1), ‘Poverty Alleviation in the Wake of Typhoon Yolanda’. The workshop was held on 30 September 2015 at Balay Kalinaw, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. Delegates at the workshop were drawn from academia, civil society, the business community and the military2. Around 50 delegates attended the workshop. All of the delegates involved in the workshop were experts or had experience in disaster relief either in the field or as a topic of academic and policy research. Experts were drawn from the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand. In some cases workshop delegates were on the ground during Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan) or the immediate aftermath. The workshop was composed of three panels entitled: ‘Poverty Alleviation in the Wake of Natural Disasters’, ‘Livelihood and Community’ and ‘Governance and Resilience’, and a closing round table discussion.ESRC-DFI

From the ancient Silk Road to the belt and road initiative: narratives, signalling and trust-building

Narratives help in interpreting and understanding surrounding political realities. Yet, the divergence of narratives may also create distrust, and it is an important reason for greatly diverging perceptions of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) between China and the international community. This paper explores how trust can be bridged between different narratives. It discusses the notions of trust and how the Chinese concept of ‘brightness’ contributes to a strategic signalling process for trust-building in strategic cooperation. This paper proposes that trust-building is a process of signalling and knowledge building. Only when the signal sent for strategic cooperation fits the other parties’ knowledge about the sender, can the trust-building process succeed. This compatibility between signals and developed knowledge can be the result of several rounds of signalling, in which the signal sender’s honesty regarding their self-interests and intentions is the necessary pre-condition