CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Mangimela, William |
|---|---|
| Title | Deepening South-South Dependency? China's Cooperative Rhetoric and Economic Engagement in Zambia |
| Summary | China’s relationship with Zambia is based on the principles of south-south cooperation. However, propagating south–south principles as a basis for China’s relations with Zambia may disguise a dependent relationship that exist between the two countries. Most analysis of Zambia’s relations with China has focused on the mines; and how Chinese investment is creating employment; flooding the Zambian market with cheap and low quality Chinese goods; bad working conditions, including low wages in Chinese owned companies; and squeezing of private domestic sector. Most of this analysis is not based on an empirical investigation of historical and current data that compares the changing magnitude of Chinese investment and trade flows in Zambia with other countries. This is especially important because such an approach not only demonstrates the changing nature of Chinese engagement, but also substantiates the share of economic partners and the nature of trade relations in Zambia’s economy. Using quantitative data, this thesis provides a critical analysis of Zambia-China relations, interrogating new, actually existing dynamics of south-south cooperation to ask if contrary to its cooperative rhetorical claims this is in practice generating new economic dependency. It also interrogates the interest of governing elites from Zambia and China in their economic relations through the establishment of Chinese Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in Zambia. This thesis argues that China is now a major but not the dominant player in Zambia’s economy, and that despite a formal political aim to diversify Zambia’s economy, the actual underlying nature of economic relations is such as to confirm Zambia’s dependence on natural resource based trade. The conclusion of this is that it gives rather a gloomy picture if Zambia has to break its historic dependency on commodity exports. |
| Supervisor | Dr. Daniel Large |
| Department | School of Public Policy MPA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/mangimela_william.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University