Countries along the Belt and Road face major strategic technical and political questions when considering Chinese assistance in the telecommunications field. In this episode, Dr. DingFei discusses two articles on Chinese telecoms investments in Ethiopia. Through the lenses of Ethiopian state-Chinese company negotiations as well as employment practices, she explains how Ethiopian actors have corralled Chinese company interests to better serve their priorities and put bounds on their dominance of the Ethiopian telecommunications system by introducing inter-firm competition.

See Dr. DingFei's relevant publications here:
1) Chinese Telecommunications Companies in Ethiopia: The Influences of Host Government Intervention and Inter-firm Competition. (2020) The China Quarterly
2) Employee Management Strategies of Chinese Telecommunications Companies in Ethiopia: Half-way Localization and Internationalization. (2020) Journal of Contemporary China

Check out our recommendations!

Ding
1) Africa's Shadow Rise: China and the Mirage of African Economic Development, Pádraig Carmody, Peter Kragelund, and Ricardo Reboredo, September 2020

Erik
1) Going Local: An Assessment of China’s Administrative-Level Activity in Latin America and the Caribbean, Margaret Myers, December 2020
2) How To with John Wilson, HBO

Juliet
1) Media Politics in China: Improvising Power Under Authoritarianism, Maria Repnikova, June 2017

~Special thanks to Maggie Gaus, who joined the Belt and Road Pod team in Dec 2020 and edited this episode~

Thanks for listening!

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