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• In the post-financial crisis era, fiscal challenges have led countries adopt a more market-based means of development finance. • The state is not a sheer subsidizer distorting market in favor of policy objectives, but a risk-sharing, profit-seeking equity investor. • China's investment fund offers not only equity shares but also state-related resources to assist private firms' business expansion in Africa. • Stateness has prevented the investment fund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The post-2008 financial crisis era has witnessed a significant change in the global development landscape. Fiscal challenges have led countries that historically provided state-led, gift-like development assistance to adopt a more market-based means of development finance driven by self-interest. This allows us to reconsider the roles of the state and the market in development by focusing on the China-Africa Development Fund (CADFund), China's first official development-oriented investment fund and a subsidiary of the China Development Bank, the world's largest national development bank. This paper draws from interviews and participant observations involving CADFund, its partners, and project companies in Africa to examine how China's official finance mobilizes private investment to facilitate global development. The findings indicate that the state-led equity fund has catalyzed the start-up and expansion of Chinese overseas private enterprises by providing otherwise inaccessible equity support and channeling additional state-related resources to empower long-term business development. Meanwhile, stateness has created an adverse selection problem, preventing CADFund from choosing the most financially promising projects or withdrawing from the failing ones. The paper sheds light on the potential challenges facing development finance institutions in employing equity investment as a tool for reconciling long-term development objectives and short-term commercial objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The growing involvement of the Chinese state and business in Africa has generated significant debate about China’s Africa strategy and the benefits for Africa’s development. What is the nature of Chinese state capitalism in Africa? This study examines Chinese state–business relations and argues that China’s involvement in Africa is more complex than often portrayed. It aims to build a closer understanding of the diverse factors that influence the Chinese state–business relations as it is implemented in Africa. This paper focuses on how state–business interactions influence agricultural development outcomes, using six case-studies from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It explores the question of how far the state can control business and direct development by identifying the key relationships that influence the decision-making processes of state and business actors within China and its African engagement. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom of homogenized, unitary relations. It argues that these relations are, in practice, heterogeneous, as a result of the state being disaggregated into a multiplicity of provincial relations and central state agencies, and tensions arising between commercial market and political interests. The active role of African governments in agricultural schemes is also affecting outcomes. China’s engagement is multivariate, involving a multiplicity of agencies, operating at different levels, structures, and processes with sometimes contrary interests and goals. The findings of an analysis of six state–business projects in the agricultural sectors of Zimbabwe and Mozambique suggest that where agriculture is concerned, a wide range of Chinese agencies are involved, with businesses being driven by either market forces or national state interests, which together make outcomes less open to generalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese firms operating in Africa are often accused of violating international labour standards and not adhering with national labour laws. Considering China’s tendency to maintain control over development projects throughout the entire implementation phase, using Chinese contractors for work performed in the recipient countries, the present paper investigates whether China impacts African labour practices in their capacity as a donor. Specifically, we use a new data material allowing for systematic quantitative analysis of Chinese development finance to investigate whether Chinese development projects affect trade union involvement. Matching geo-referenced data on the subnational allocation of Chinese development projects to Africa over the 2000–2012 period with 41,902 survey respondents across 18 African countries, our estimation strategy relies on comparing the trade union involvement of individuals who live near a site where a Chinese project is being implemented at the time of the interview to those of individuals living near a site where a Chinese project will appear in the future, but where implementation had yet to be initiated at the time of the survey. The results consistently indicate that Chinese development projects – unlike the projects of other major donors – discourage trade union involvement in the local area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary To investigate whether Africa’s exports to China influence labor practices in Africa, we reconsider the debate over trade’s influence on regulatory standards in exporting countries. The first generation of trade–regulation scholars asked whether high levels of exports influenced regulatory standards of exporting countries, with inconclusive results. The second generation of scholarship focused not on how much a country exported but to whom it exported, identifying a “California Effect” by which firms and consumers in (mostly developed) importing countries projected their high regulatory standards on less developed export partners. Structural change—especially the rise of China as a major importer—poses a challenge to these optimistic findings. Drawing on insights from the analysis of compositional data, this paper introduces a third generation of trade–regulation research, which suggests examining not only with whom a country trades, but also how the composition of markets in a country’s export basket reshuffles over time. Specifically, we explore the possibility of a “Shanghai Effect” whereby African countries begin to reflect the lower labor standards of China, which has emerged as a major destination for their exports. We show that when a country increases exports to China, the net effect on domestic labor standards depends critically on the labor practices of other export destinations compositionally displaced by China exports. Our analysis of a panel of 49 African countries for the period 1985–2010 produces a small continent-wide estimate of China’s negative influence on African labor practices. In-sample simulation at the country level uncovers a moderate Shanghai Effect for a handful of countries only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Each year around 10,000 African officials are trained in China, across a range of themes. Among these, agriculture and development policy are prominent. In this paper we ask what lies behind this program, and how it fits with wider commercial, diplomatic, and geopolitical ambitions of China in Africa. Through work carried out in China, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, involving attending courses, interviewing participants and lecturers, examining curricula and reviewing policy documents, we assess Chinese agricultural development courses, supported by China’s Ministry of Commerce. Contrary to the argument that a singular “Beijing Consensus” is being pushed, we find a wide range of course offerings from a range of institutions across China, and extensive debate about agricultural development. This reflects the internal Chinese debate, and an approach to development emphasizing demonstration, experiment, and learning. Course participation involves officials from across Africa, and does not correlate with Chinese commercial interests in Africa. Commercial opportunities may be linked to training, and some courses are run by companies, although instances of take-up are few. The overall direct and immediate impact on agricultural development in Africa appears limited; instead the training program must be seen in relation to building relationships among a large group of African officials, and so the exertion of “soft power” in foreign policy, as part of development cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Chinese SOEs have made CSR a priority, yet two case studies show that implementation largely depends on local conditions. • Negative externalities from the BRI result from Chinese SOEs' adaptation to the regulatory gaps of host countries. • Insufficient Chinese state enforcement of CSR policies encourages Chinese economic actors to resort to adaptive governance. • Concern among Chinese economic and state actors over low governance standards has led them to create new approaches to CSR. • Interactions between Chinese and host-country economic actors determine the BRI's constantly shifting model of governance. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is increasingly investing abroad and has become an important country for development financing. Many commentators have expressed concern that the country is defying the Western path of sustainable development guided by the rule of law and good governance standards. Yet, studies of the real existing articulation of the BRI are lacking. Through a comparative case study of Chinese loans for infrastructure in East Africa (the Standard Gauge Railroad in Kenya and the Ethiopia-Djibouti railroad), this article offers a consolidated and more systematic assessment of what kind of governance China is in fact practicing through the BRI and the reasons behind what I argue to be its 'adaptive governance' approach. Specifically, it examines the attitude of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) toward corporate social responsibility (CRS) in light of the regulatory frameworks of the Chinese central government and host governments. Through a combination of document analysis and in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders, this paper compares the railroads China has financed and built in Kenya and Ethiopia as part of the BRI with a focus on CRS and their economic, social, and environmental impacts. It argues that the reason for the differing CRS in the two case studies is that China is not forcing upon host countries any specific type of governance, because its approach is above all adaptive and conforms with its core principles of sovereignty and non-interference. Such an approach, however, has generated several negative externalities that may reinforce poor governance standards and ultimately undermine the sustainability and developmental outcomes of the BRI. By looking at concrete cases from the ground, this article sheds new light on China's emerging development paradigm along the BRI and addresses some of the concerns related to China's rise as a great power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]