Chinese Investment and New Modalities of State Intervention in Ethiopia

Abstract

This is a more detailed discussion of the distinct impact of Chinese investment and some general characteristics of the Chinese party-state on state-society relations in Ethiopia, including media freedom and civil society activities. The chapter highlights the crucial point that the distinct Chinese impact should be defined by one developmental state ushering in the capital from another developmental state, since all kinds of major international investments (including the more ‘authentic’ neoliberal Western capital) would have reinforced a hosting developmental state as demonstrated by China’s own experience. This book has applied the ‘second image reversed’ framework to study the nature of Chinese investment in Ethiopia and how it is internalised within new modalities of state intervention in Ethiopia. It is argued that through various institutions, ideological synergies and economic policy, the Ethiopian state is reinforcing Chinese globalisation strategies through developing institutions and social coalitions that underpin an Ethiopian neoliberalism. These processes, the thesis has argued, illustrate the intertwined nature of Chinese and Ethiopian neoliberalisms. One important consequence of this internalisation is that it has blurred the distinction between the political and economic arenas of the Ethiopian state. The overriding observation is that Chinese investment is strengthening the Ethiopian state institutions by exporting, through various forms of capital, an ideology of public governance and economic organisation that buttresses regime interests of the EPRDF. The chapter shows that the similarities between China and Ethiopia are now even more striking with both countries now sharing a common model of state capitalism shaping state-society relations and governance in similar ways.