Chinese peanuts and Chinese machinga

‘Under construction’: everyday anxieties and the proliferating social meanings of China in Kenya

“…With the exception of Angola (see, for example, de Morais 2011; Power and Alves 2012) and Zambia (see, for example, Mwanawina 2008; Negi 2008; Lee 2017), Chinese investment in particular countries has not been analysed as comprehensively as it has been at the level of the continent. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in more situated evaluations of ‘African perceptions’ that intentionally seek to absent state- and regional-level analyses (see, for example, Sautman and Hairong 2009; Gadzala and Hanusch 2010), efforts that aim to demystify the ‘on the ground’ experiences of Chinese workers on the continent (for example, Schmitz 2014; Sheridan 2018; 2019) as well as Chinese citizens’ opinions of Africa and vice versa (Shen 2009 is one example). With its focus on the socially constructed meanings of China and ‘the Chinese’ in Kenya, this article contributes to this interdisciplinary scholarship.…”

“…Certainly, this need to move away from ‘imperialism’ was much discussed in the context of the president's and vice president's indictment at the International Criminal Court in the Hague after the 2007–08 post-election violence; 4 it can also be extended to the present, especially in view of the ‘South–South’ discourses that are constitutive of China's charm offensive in Africa (cf. Sheridan 2018). One young senator affiliated to the ruling party with whom I spoke shared, perhaps expectedly, similar views to those espoused by the government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.…”

“…In his words, the fact that the ‘Chinese have removed millions of peasants from poverty on the backs of Africans’ through infrastructural contracts undertaken on the continent was laudable, and something that we ‘Africans’ could learn from 5 . This statement could be one of the ‘myths about Africa and China’ (Sheridan 2018: 145) that circulates as a consequence of greater bilateral proximity, or a reproduction of the long-established trope that juxtaposes the continent's fates and futures after independence with those of Asia, and in particular Singapore 6 . Whatever the case, implicit in this comparison is Asia's rapid development and Africa's ‘lagging behind’, and the construction of recent mega-infrastructures in Kenya, such as the SGR, are seen to be motivated by this bid to enable a ‘new chapter in Kenya's history’ (Okoth 2017; Kimari and Ernstson 2020) – one filled with the ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’ that Sino-Kenyan alliances are said to pursue.…”

“…At the same time, and as I put forward in this article, while the social meanings of China and ‘the Chinese’ are ‘under construction’, especially as the forms of China's relationship with Kenya gain new breadths and depths, much of what it now habitually represents gestures towards anxieties that register a complex dissatisfaction with government practices (cf. Sheridan 2018). As a case in point, the two ethnographic snapshots shared below not only point to the increasing everyday references to China and ‘the Chinese’ by a variety of local actors beyond expected interlocutors (i.e.…”

“…Certainly, in their emergence as infrastructural articulations of national goals – for example, Vision 2030 and Uhuru Kenyatta's Big Four Agenda – these mega-projects habitually built by Chinese state-owned companies are simultaneously the outcome of China–Kenya arrangements and government operations directed, ostensibly, towards ‘development’. Related to this argument, I aim to show how, even as the state seeks to ‘overdetermine’ (Sheridan 2018) the ways in which the concrete manifestations of the China–Kenya relationship are discussed, the architectures that materialize from this association help generate a surplus of signifiers, beyond those formally intended, which are then linked to China and ‘the Chinese’ locally.…”