New CWP alum book 'The Railpolitik: Leadership and Agency in Sino-African Infrastructure Development' by Yuan Wang
With Beijing’s announcement of the ‘going global’ policy in the early 2000s and the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, Chinese policy banks and state-owned companies have cooperated with African countries to finance and complete many infrastructure projects. These projects, despite their ‘Chineseness’, demonstrate starkly different development trajectories in different countries. Why do some Chinese-financed and -constructed projects develop better than others? And what explains differential African state effectiveness in public goods delivery? This book traces the process of three Chinese-sponsored railway projects in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Angola. These serve as lenses to inspect the broader phenomenon of the fast-progressing Sino-African relation and African domestic politics. The book shows that African political championship is the central factor that determines Chinese-sponsored railway outcomes. Contrary to the conventional knowledge that centralized political institutions such as those in the developmental states are more conducive to rulers’ commitment to developmental projects, it finds that political championship can be generated from leaders’ perceived threats of competitive elections in democratic states like Kenya. These Chinese-financed and -constructed projects coincided with African rulers’ strategies for political survival. These projects are therefore instrumentalized politically to demonstrate rulers’ performance legitimacy and fuel their patronage machine. The empirical evidence is collected from extensive field research in Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, and China from 2014 to 2019. Empirical analysis is based on 250 in-depth interviews with African and Chinese government officials, corporate managers, civil society leaders, journalists, citizens, and scholars combined with episodes of participatory observation with Chinese railway contractors in Africa.
https://academic.oup.com/book/55241?login=false - Published: 15 November 2023
Yuan Wang's research interests cover global China, African politics and comparative political economy of development. She is especially interested in African state effectiveness and China's economic and political engagement with Africa. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include China and the world, Sino-African relations, and African politics and development.
Her book project investigates why Chinese-financed and Chinese-constructed projects follow starkly contrasting trajectories in different African countries. She has also undertaken research projects covering Chinese overseas engagement in Cambodia and Europe. Her papers have been published in leading academic journals such as Comparative Politics.
She received a bachelor of law in international relations from Shanghai International Studies University and a master of public policy from Harvard Kennedy School. Oxford University awarded her both a master of science in politics research and a doctor of philosophy in politics. She was the 2021-22 fellow at the Columbia-Harvard China and the world program and postdoctoral research scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. She also taught Sino-African Relations in History and Present at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. Before returning to academia, she served in the China office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and at the Sino-Africa Centre of Excellence Foundation, Nairobi office.
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