Fragmenting China: a relational approach to analyzing Chinese private companies in Africa

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Many International Relations (IR) debates seeking to situate China either as ‘revisionist’ or a ‘status-quo’ power miss an important point. China’s global behavior – wherever it may fall on the spectrum of cooperation to resistance – occurs within a complex network of relations involving host government industrial policies, multilateral institutions, and a mix of state-owned and private enterprises. To redress this shortcoming, this article makes three interventions. First, it shows how Global South states actively shape and contribute to the making of Chinese enterprises into the big global players they have become. Second, it demonstrates the limitations of the causal approach to influence when it comes to the agency of Global South actors and China’s engagements in the global economy and argues in favor of a relational approach to influence. Third, it stresses the importance of looking at private companies provides a necessary corrective government- and institution-focused analyses. By studying the case of Chinese private company Sunmaker and its entry in Uganda’s oil and gas industry, we offer a necessary in-depth analytical approach to understanding how China’s views on global economic governance are shaped by Global South actors.