How Africans Pursue Low-End Globalization in Hong Kong and Mainland China
Gordon Mathews,Yang Yang +1 more
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors look at the livelihoods and lives of African traders coming to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, and argue that one essential economic role China plays today is in manufacturing the cheap, sometimes counterfeit goods that enable Africa and other developing-world regions to experience globalization; African traders who come to China help make this possible.Abstract:
This article looks at the livelihoods and lives of African traders coming to Hong Kong and Guangzhou. These traders are practising “low-end globalization”, involving small amounts of capital, and semi-legal or illegal transactions under the radar of the law. The article first considers who these traders are, portraying them as, typically, members of the upper crust of their home societies. It then considers these traders in Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, a building that is an entrepot between China and the developing world. Finally, it looks at traders’ livelihoods and lives in Guangzhou, South China, and traders’ efforts to succeed in mainland China. The article argues that one essential economic role China plays today is in manufacturing the cheap, sometimes counterfeit goods that enable Africa and other developing-world regions to experience globalization; the African traders who come to China help make this possible.read more
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‘Homing’ Guangzhou: Emplacement, belonging and precarity among Africans in China:
TL;DR: In the last decade, countless Africans have been moving between China and Africa as discussed by the authors, and while Africans in Guangzhou have been generally portrayed as a wave of 'immigrant traders', they arrive in China...
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Feeling at home in the “Chocolate City”: an exploration of place-making practices and structures of belonging amongst Africans in Guangzhou
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References
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Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the economic activities of the low-income section of the labour force in Accra, the urban sub-proletariat into which the unskilled and illiterate majority of Frafra migrants are drawn.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the paradoxes of Sovereignty and Independence: "Real" and "Pseudo-" Nation-States and the Depoliticization of Poverty.
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TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that Chinese-African cooperation remains constrained by the asymmetric nature of relations and Africa's changing attitude towards issues such as humanitarian intervention, however, despite China's growing presence in Africa and its professed willingness to ignore political conditionalities.
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A Modern History of Hong Kong
TL;DR: Hong Kong as discussed by the authors is a former British colony that became an international centre with global shipping, banking and financial interests, and the most momentous change in the history of this prosperous, capitalist colony was its return in 1997 to "Mother China", the most powerful Communist state in the world.