Beyond "China in Africa": Firm Diversity and the Political Economy of Chinese Manufacturing Investment in Ethiopia
Speaker：Chen Weiwei, Visiting Research Associate, The Open University
Host：Lu Di, Professor, Lingnan College
Time and Date：10:00, September 19, 2026 (Saturday)
Venue：Room 601, Lingnan MBA Building
Language：Chinese
Abstract：
Why do Chinese manufacturing firms operating under broadly similar policy and institutional frameworks in Ethiopia follow sharply different investment and adaptation trajectories? Moving beyond a singular narrative of "China in Africa", this talk places firm diversity at the centre of analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of longitudinal fieldwork, interviews, participant observation and firm-level engagement, it examines how ownership, market orientation, capabilities, networks and integration into global production networks shape firm strategies and outcomes. It also analyses how formal policy is mediated through negotiation, discretion, institutional fragmentation and implementation bottlenecks, producing unequal access to land, infrastructure, foreign exchange, incentives and problem-solving support.
The talk further explores how COVID-19, political instability, foreign-exchange pressures and the withdrawal of African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) preferences intensified existing differences. It argues that investment outcomes are co-produced by firm strategies, host-country political economy and policy implementation, with implications for employment, upgrading, local linkages, export performance and African industrialization.
Profile:
Dr Chen Weiwei is a political economist and Global China scholar researching the impacts of Chinese investment across Africa and Europe. She is a Visiting Research Associate at The Open University (OU) and Global Investment Advisor to the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), where she translates field-based evidence into recommendations on investment governance, industrial policy, investment facilitation and implementation. She received her PhD in Development Studies from SOAS University of London in 2021. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork in Ethiopia and Angola, her research examines Chinese manufacturing investment, firm heterogeneity, state–business relations, industrial parks, labour and skills, export upgrading and corporate adaptation. Her monograph, Chinese Manufacturing Firms in Ethiopia: Firm Diversity and the Political Economy of Investment, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2026.
From 2022 to 2025, she led the UK research stream of the European Research Council (ERC)-funded REDEFINE project, comparing London, Manchester and Duisburg and analysing infrastructure investment, urban regeneration, city diplomacy and multi-level governance. She co-supervised doctoral research on Chinese multinational enterprises and wind-energy infrastructure in the United Kingdom and Germany, and has delivered invited teaching at the Wharton School and the Greehey School of Business. Her research has been published in Economic Geography, the Journal of International Development and the Journal of International Relations and Development.
