Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:35:25.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Engendering China–Africa Encounters: Chinese Family Firms, Black Women Workers and the Gendered Politics of Production in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2022

Liang Xu
Liang Xu*
Affiliation:
School of International Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China. Email: liangxu@pku.edu.cn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article highlights the centrality of family and gender in Chinese factories in Africa through a case study of Chinese garment production in Newcastle, South Africa. The data used in the article were collected through field research in 2015 and 2016 and several follow-up interviews in 2020 and 2021. The study presents a twofold argument. First, Chinese garment firms in Newcastle can be characterized as “translocal” family firms. Unlike Chinese state enterprises and large transnational companies, these translocal family firms represent a particular kind of private capital that prioritizes a diversified source of income and that is economically embedded but less concessionary to labour pressures. Second, the racial and class encounters between Chinese employers and African women workers are constructed and contested through gender. While Chinese employers attempt to impose racial hierarchy and increase production, Zulu women workers respond to managerial control and demands in creative and gendered ways.

摘要

摘要

本文选取南非新堡市的华人服装厂为研究案例，突出强调华人工厂与非洲劳工互动过程中的家庭和性别因素。本研究使用的资料主要来自作者 2015 至 2016 年在新堡市开展的田野调查以及作者在 2020 至 2021 年对当地华人企业主的后续访谈。本文提出了两个主要观点。第一，本文将新堡市的华人工厂定性为“跨地方”家庭企业。与中国国有企业和大型跨国企业不同，跨地方家庭企业代表一种特有的私营资本。他们重视收入来源的多样性，经济上更加嵌入于本地市场，并且在与劳工谈判中更可能采取不妥协的态度。第二，本文强调，华人企业主与非洲女工的相遇不仅是基于种族和阶层的相遇，性别也是构建这种相遇并挑战种族和阶层等级的重要因素。本研究表明，当华人企业主试图在工厂车间内强化种族差异，提高服装产量时，祖鲁女工通过具有鲜明性别特点的方式进行了回应和抵抗。

Keywords

ChinaSouth AfricaNewcastleChinese garment family firmsZulu factory workers中国南非新堡华人家庭服装厂祖鲁女工
Type
Special section: “Inside Global China”
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 250 , June 2022 , pp. 356 - 375
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Atkins, Keletso E. 1993. The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843–1900. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Berger, Iris. 1992. Threads of Solidarity: Women in South Africa Industry, 1900–1980. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Blewett, Mary. 1988. Men, Women, and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780–1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Brautigam, Deborah. 2009. The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brautigam, Deborah, Weis, Toni and Tang, Xiaoyang. 2018. “Latent advantage, complex challenges: industrial policy and Chinese linkages in Ethiopia's leather sector.” China Economic Review 48, 158–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burawoy, Michael. 1972. The Colour of Class on the Copperbelt: From African Advancement to Zambianization. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Calabrese, Linda, and Tang, Xiaoyang. 2020. “Africa's Economic Transformation: The Role of Chinese Investment.” DEGRP report, June. https://cdn.odi.org/media/documents/DEGRP-Africas-economic-transformation-the-role-of-Chinese-investment-Synthesis-report.pdf.Google Scholar
Casale, Daniela, and Posel, Dorrit. 2002. “The continued feminization of the labor force in South Africa.” South African Journal of Economics 70 (1), 156–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 1980. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. 2003. “Industrial man goes to Africa.” In Lindsay, Lisa and Miescher, Stephan (eds.), Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 128–137.Google Scholar
Crais, Clifton, and Scully, Pamela. 2009. Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Driessen, Miriam. 2019. Tales of Hope, Tastes of Bitterness: Chinese Road Builders in Ethiopia. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Dublin, Thomas. 1979. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826–1860. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Engmann, Rachel Ama Asaa. 2012. “Under imperial eyes, black bodies, buttocks, and breasts: British colonial photography and Asante ‘fetish girls’.” African Arts 45 (2), 46–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fei, Ding. 2021. “Chinese telecommunications companies in Ethiopia: the influences of host government intervention and inter-firm competition.” China Quarterly 245, 186–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Jeff. 1990. “Gender oppression in southern Africa's precapitalist societies.” In Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945. Claremont, SA: David Philip, 33–47.Google Scholar
Hall, Katharine, and Posel, Dorrit. 2019. “Fragmenting the family? The complexity of household migration strategies in post-apartheid South Africa.” IZA Journal of Development and Migration 10 (2), 22–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Gary, and Kao, Cheng-Shu. 1990. “The institutional foundations of Chinese business: the family firm in Taiwan.” Comparative Social Research 12, 95–112.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Gary, and Kao, Cheng-Shu. 2017. Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, Gillian. 2002. Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hassim, Shireen, and Metelerkamp, Jo. 1988. “Restructuring the family? The relevance of the proposed national family program to the politics of family in the natal region.” Unpublished paper, presented at the Workshop on Regionalism and Restructuring in Natal, University of Natal, Durban, 28–31 January.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jeffrey, and Mills, Greg. 2015. How South Africa Works and Must Do Better. Johannesburg, SA: Pan Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hsiung, Pin-Chun. 1996. Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Heather. 1990. “A lighthouse for African womanhood: Inanda Seminary, 1869–1945.” In Walker, Cherryl (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945. Claremont, SA: David Philip, 197–220.Google Scholar
Hunter, Mark. 2010. Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lal, Priya. 2010. “Militants, mothers, and the national family.” Journal of African History 51, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 1998. Gender and the South China Miracle. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2017. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Justin Yifu, and Xu, Jiajun. 2019. “China's light manufacturing and Africa's industrialization.” In Oqubay, Arkebe and Lin, Justin Yifu (eds.), China–Africa and an Economic Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 265–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Song-Huann. 2001. “The Relations between the Republic of China and the Republic of South Africa, 1948–1998.” PhD diss., University of Pretoria.Google Scholar
Liu, Jing. 2014. “Jiating lunli de songdong: linshi fuqi de hunyin, jiating, shengyu yu xing” (Loosened Family Ethics: The Marriage, Family, Parenthood and Sex of Temporary Couples). PhD diss., Wuhan University.Google Scholar
Mager, Anne. 1999. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945–1959. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Nattrass, Nicoli, and Seekings, Jeremy. 2013. “Job Destruction in the South African Clothing Industry.” Focus paper, Center for Development and Enterprise, Johannesburg, South Africa.Google Scholar
Nattrass, Nicoli, and Seekings, Jeremy. 2016. “Institutions, wage differentiation and the structure of employment in SA.” In Black, Anthony (ed.), Towards Employment-Intensive Growth in South Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 307–326.Google Scholar
Nattrass, Nicoli, and Seekings, Jeremy. 2019. Inclusive Dualism: Labour-Intensive Development, Decent Work, and Surplus Labour in Southern Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1987. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Oya, Carlos, and Schaefer, Florian. 2019. “Chinese Firms and Employment Dynamics in Africa: A Comparative Analysis.” IDCEA Research Synthesis Report, SOAS, University of London.Google Scholar
Park, Yoon Jung. 2009. “Chinese Migration in Africa.” SAIIA Occasional Paper no. 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Yoon Jung, and Tang, Xiaoyang. 2021. “Chinese FDI and Impacts on technology transfer, linkages, and learning in Africa: evidence from the field.” Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies. DOI: 10.1080/14765284.2021.1996191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickles, John, and Woods, Jeff. 1989. “Taiwanese investment in South Africa.” African Affairs 88 (353), 507–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Rounds, Zander, and Huang, Hongxiang. 2017. “We Are Not So Different: A Comparative Study of Employment Relations at Chinese and American Firms in Kenya.” SAIS-CARI Working Paper no. 10, Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Scott, James. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scully, Ben. 2016. “From the shop floor to the kitchen table: the shifting centre of precarious workers’ politics in South Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 43 (148), 295–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoler, Ann Laura. 2010. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sun, Irene, Jayaram, Kartik and Kassiri, Omid. 2017. “Dance of the Lions and Dragons: How are Africa and China Engaging, and How Will the Partnership Evolve?” McKinsey Global Institute report.Google Scholar
Takala-Greenish, Lotta. 2015. “The Emperor's New Clothes: A Political Economy Study of the South African Textiles and Clothing Industry.” PhD diss., University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.Google Scholar
Tang, Xiaoyang, and Eom, Janet. 2019. “Time perception and industrialization: divergence and convergence of work ethics in Chinese enterprises in Africa.” China Quarterly 238, 461–481.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward Palmer. 1971. “The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century.” Past and Present 50 (1), 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todes, Alison. 1997. “Restructuring, Migration and Regional Policy in South Africa: The Case of Newcastle.” PhD diss., University of Natal, Durban.Google Scholar
Webster, Edward, and von Holdt, Karl (eds.). 2005. Beyond the Apartheid Workplace – Studies in Transition. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.Google Scholar
Wolpe, Harold. 1972. “Capitalism and cheap labor-power in South Africa: from segregation to apartheid.” Economy and Society 1 (4), 425–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Siu-Lun. 1985. “The Chinese family firm: a model.” British Journal of Sociology 36 (1), 58–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, Xiao An. 2012. “Unmentionable story: wife and secondary wife, concubine and mui tsai in an overseas Chinese family.” In Yōko, Hayami (ed.), The Family in Flux in Southeast Asia: Institution, Ideology, Practice. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 203–226.Google Scholar
Xu, Liang. 2019. “Factory, family, and industrial frontier: a socioeconomic study of Chinese Clothing firms in Newcastle, South Africa.” Economic History of Developing Regions 34 (3), 300–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Liang. 2020. “The comforts of home: a historical study of family well-being among Chinese migrants in South Africa.” Asian Ethnicity 2 (4), 507–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Hairong, and Sautman, Barry. 2012. “Chasing ghosts: rumours and representations of the export of Chinese convict labour to developing countries.” China Quarterly 210, 398–418.Google Scholar