Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:57:14.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chinese Telecommunications Companies in Ethiopia: The Influences of Host Government Intervention and Inter-firm Competition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2020

Ding Fei Open the ORCID record for Ding Fei [Opens in a new window]
Ding Fei*
Affiliation:
School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines Chinese engagement in Ethiopia's telecommunications sector. It argues that while theories of developmental state and global production networks contribute important insights on the roles of state agency and inter-firm relations in the rise of global lead firms from East Asia, they are insufficient to interpret the recent overseas ventures of Chinese companies in Africa. A case study of one flagship Chinese telecommunications company in Ethiopia advances the existing literature by highlighting the influences of host government intervention and inter-firm competition in shaping firms’ local operations. Specifically, this article analyses a myriad of changes in the case company's organizational structure and business practices in response to increased market competition administered by the Ethiopian government. Findings reveal that despite benefiting from official inter-state cooperation, Chinese overseas companies are neither static nor merely state-driven players but are flexible in adjusting strategies to improve their competitiveness in the local market.

摘要

摘要

本文探讨中国企业在埃塞俄比亚电信领域的情况。尽管发展型国家和全球生产网络理论指出了政府主导和企业关系在来自东亚的全球领先企业的崛起过程中的积极作用，但它们不足以充分解释中国公司近期在非洲的海外投资活动。基于对一家在埃塞俄比亚的中国领先电信公司的案例研究，本文强调东道国政府和企业间竞争对全球性企业的本地运营的影响，并以此推动现有文献的发展。本文分析了案例公司在组织结构和业务实践上的一系列变化，以应对由埃塞俄比亚政府主导的中国公司之间的市场竞争。研究结果表明，尽管受益于两国的官方合作关系，中国的海外公司并非静态的，或者仅仅是由国家驱动的全球化参与者。相反，企业在调整策略以提高市场竞争力方面具有相当的灵活性和战略性。

Keywords

firm strategiesglobal production networksgovernment interventionmarket competitionChina–Africa cooperationtelecom公司战略全球生产网络国家干预市场竞争中非合作电信
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 245 , March 2021 , pp. 186 - 207
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the 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

Alden, Chris, and Alves, Christina. 2008. “History and identity in the construction of China's Africa policy.” Review of African Political Economy 35(115), 43–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alden, Chris, and Davies, Martyn. 2006. “A profile of the operations of Chinese multinationals in Africa.” South African Journal of International Affairs 13(1), 83–96.10.1080/10220460609556787CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alden, Chris, and Large, Daniel. 2011. “China's exceptionalism and the challenges of delivering difference in Africa.” Journal of Contemporary China 20(68), 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amsden, Alice H. 1992. Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arsene, Codrin. 2014. “Chinese employers and their Ugandan workers: tensions, frictions and cooperation in an African city.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 43(1), 139–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azmeh, Shamel, and Nadvi, Khalid. 2013. “‘Greater Chinese’ global production networks in the Middle East: the rise of the Jordanian garment industry.” Development and Change 44(6), 1317–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baek, Seung-Wook. 2005. “Does China follow ‘the East Asian development model’?” Journal of Contemporary Asia 35(4), 485–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beeson, Mark. 2009. “Developmental states in East Asia: a comparison of the Japanese and Chinese experiences.” Asian Perspective 33(2), 5–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behuria, Pritish. 2019. “The domestic political economy of upgrading in global value chains: how politics shapes pathways for upgrading in Rwanda's coffee sector.” Review of International Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1625803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bräutigam, Deborah, Weis, Toni and Tang, Xiaoyang. 2015. “Latent advantage, complex challenges: industrial policy and Chinese linkages in Ethiopia's leather sector.” China Economic Review 48, 158–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brenner, N. 1999. “Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies.” Theory and Society 28(1), 39–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslin, Shaun. 1996. “China: developmental state or dysfunctional development?” Third World Quarterly 17(4), 689–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslin, Shaun. 2013. “China and the global order: signalling threat or friendship?” International Affairs 89(3), 615–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabestan, Jean-Pierre. 2012. “China and Ethiopia: authoritarian affinities and economic cooperation.” China Perspectives 4(2012), 53–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carmody, Pádraig, and Kragelund, Peter. 2016. “Who is in charge? State power and agency in Sino-African relations.” Cornell International Law Journal 49(2007), 1–24.Google Scholar
Carmody, Pádraig, and Taylor, Ian. 2010. “Flexigemony and force in China's resource diplomacy in Africa: Sudan and Zambia compared.” Geopolitics 15(3), 496–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Neil M. 2011. “Geographies of production II: a global production network A–Z.” Progress in Human Geography 36(3), 389–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Neil M. 2019. “Global production networks: mapping recent conceptual developments.” Journal of Economic Geography 19, 775–801.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Neil M., and Yeung, Henry Wai-chung. 2015. Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Seth, Lu, Jixia, Tugendhat, Henry and Alemu, Dawit. 2016. “Chinese migrants in Africa: facts and fictions from the agri-food sector in Ethiopia and Ghana.” World Development 81, 61–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooke, Fang Lee. 2012. “The globalization of Chinese telecom corporations: strategy, challenges and HR implications for the MNCs and host countries.” The International Journal of Human Resource Management 23(February 2015), 1832–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corkin, Lucy. 2016. Uncovering African Agency: Angola's Management of China's Credit Lines. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeWoskin, Kenneth J. 2001. “The WTO and the telecommunications sector in China.” The China Quarterly 167, 630–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dicken, Peter. 2010. “Transnational corporations and nation-states.” International Social Science Journal 49(151), 77–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dicken, Peter. 2015. Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy. New York: Guilford Publications.Google Scholar
Evans, Peter. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fei, Ding. 2017. “Worlding developmentalism: China's economic zones within and beyond its border.” Journal of International Development 29(6), 825–850.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fei, Ding. 2020. “Negotiating Chineseness: incorporating critical reflection into workplace research on Chinese investment in Ethiopia.” Area. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fei, Ding, and Liao, Chuan. 2019. “Chinese Eastern Industrial Zone in Ethiopia: unpacking the enclave.” Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1694844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fei, Ding, Samatar, Abdi and Liao, Chuan. 2018. “Chinese–African encounters in high-tech sectors: comparative investigation of Chinese workplace regimes in Ethiopia.” Development Policy Review 36(1), O455–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourie, Elsje. 2015. “China's example for Meles’ Ethiopia: when development ‘models’ land.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 53(03), 289–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gadzala, Aleksandra W. (ed.). 2015. Africa and China: How Africans and their Governments are Shaping Relations with China. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Geda, Alemayehu. 2008. “Scoping study on the Chinese relation with Sub Saharan Africa: the case of Ethiopia.” AERC Scoping Studies on China–Africa Economic Relations Working Paper, https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/93155.Google Scholar
Glassman, Jim. 1999. “State power beyond the ‘territorial trap’: the internationalization of the state.” Political Geography 18(6), 669–696.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez-Vicente, Ruben. 2011. “The internationalization of the Chinese state.” Political Geography 30(7), 402–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gu, Jing. 2009. “China's private enterprises in Africa and the implications for African development.” European Journal of Development Research 21, 570–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton-Hart, Natasha, and Yeung, Henry Wai-chung. 2019. “Institutions under pressure: East Asian states, global markets and national firms.” Review of International Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1702571.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harwit, Eric. 2007. “Building China's telecommunications network: industrial policy and the role of Chinese state-owned, foreign and private domestic enterprises.” The China Quarterly 190, 311–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harwit, Eric. 2008. China's Telecommunications Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, Jeffrey, Appelbaum, Richard P. and Ho, Suet Ying. 2013. “Globalization with Chinese characteristics: externalization, dynamics and transformations.” Development and Change 44(6), 1221–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, Jeffrey, Dicken, Peter, Hess, Martin, Coe, Neil and Yeung, Henry Wai-chung. 2002. “Global production networks and the analysis of economic development.” Review of International Political Economy 9(3), 436–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, Jeffrey, and Nadvi, Khalid. 2011. “Greater China, the challenges of global production networks and the dynamics of transformation.” Global Networks 11(3), 285–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hong, Yu. 2008. “Distinctive characteristics of China’ s path of ICT development: a critical analysis of Chinese developmental strategies in light of the Eastern Asian model.” International Journal of Communication 2, 456–471.Google Scholar
Horesh, Niv, and Lim, Kean Fan. 2017a. An East Asian Challenge to Western Neoliberalism. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horesh, Niv, and Lim, Kean Fan. 2017b. “China: an East Asian alternative to neoliberalism?” Pacific Review 30(4), 425–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horner, Rory. 2017. “Beyond facilitator? State roles in global value chains and global production networks.” Geography Compass 11, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howell, Jude. 2006. “Reflections on the Chinese state.” Development and Change 37(2), 273–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watch, Human Rights. 2014. “‘They know everything we do’: telecom and internet surveillance in Ethiopia,” 25 March, https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/03/25/they-know-everything-we-do/telecom-and-internet-surveillance-ethiopia. Accessed 9 April 2020.Google Scholar
Johnson, Chalmers. 1982. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Knight, John B. 2014. “China as a developmental state.” World Economy 37(10), 1335–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Large, Daniel. 2007. “A ‘Chinese scramble’? The politics of contemporary China–Africa relations.” African Affairs 106(422), 141–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Anshan. 2007. “China and Africa: policy and challenges.” China Security 3(3), 69–93.Google Scholar
Lim, Kean Fan. 2018. “Strategic coupling, state capitalism, and the shifting dynamics of global production networks.” Geography Compass 12(11), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohan, Giles, and Lampert, Ben. 2012. “Negotiating China: reinserting African agency into China–Africa relations.” African Affairs 112(446), 92–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohmae, Kenichi. 1995. The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Ojo, Tokunbo. 2017. “Political economy of Huawei's market strategies in the Nigerian telecommunication market.” International Communication Gazette. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048516689182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, Chengxin. 2009. “What is Chinese about Chinese businesses? Locating the ‘rise of China’ in global production networks.” Journal of Contemporary China 18(58), 7–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peck, Jamie, and Zhang, Jun. 2013. “A variety of capitalism … with Chinese characteristics?” Journal of Economic Geography 13(3), 357–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pereira, Alexius. 2008. “Whither the developmental state? Explaining Singapore's continued developmentalism.” Third World Quarterly 29(6), 1189–1203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Power, Marcus, and Mohan, Giles. 2008. “Good friends and good partners: the ‘new’ face of China–African cooperation.” Review of African Political Economy 35(115), 5–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, Jewellord Nem, and Chen, Geoffrey C.. 2017. “State-owned enterprises and the political economy of state–state relations in the developing world.” Third World Quarterly 39(6), 1077–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adrian. 2015. “The state, institutional frameworks and the dynamics of capital in global production networks.” Progress in Human Geography 39(3), 290–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutherland, Ewan. 2016. “China and Africa: alternative telecommunication policies and practices.” The African Journal of Information and Communication 17(17), 165–195.Google Scholar
Wade, Robert H. 1990. Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warmerdam, Ward, and van Dijk, M.P.. 2013. “Chinese state-owned enterprise investments in Uganda: findings from a recent survey of Chinese firms in Kampala.” Journal of Chinese Political Science 18, 281–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Linda. 1998. The Myth of the Powerless State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Joseph. 2011. Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia's Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Workneh, Téwodros W. 2014. “The Politics of Telecommunications and Development in Ethiopia.” PhD diss., University of Oregon.Google Scholar
Workneh, Téwodros W. 2018. “State monopoly of telecommunications in Ethiopia: origins, debates, and the way forward.” Review of African Political Economy 45(158), 592–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Bank. 2019a. “ICT goods exports (% of total goods exports) – China.” Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TX.VAL.ICTG.ZS.UN?locations=CN. Accessed 12 December 2019.Google Scholar
World Bank. 2019b. “ICT service exports (% of service exports, BoP) – China.” Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.GSR.CCIS.ZS?locations=CN. Accessed 12 December 2019.Google Scholar
Xu, Yi-Chong. 2014. “Chinese state-owned enterprises in Africa: ambassadors or freebooters?” Journal of Contemporary China 23(89), 822–840.Google Scholar
Yeung, Henry Wai-chung. 2014. “Governing the market in a globalizing era: developmental states, global production networks and inter-firm dynamics in East Asia.” Review of International Political Economy 21(1), 70–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeung, Henry Wai-chung. 2017. “Rethinking the East Asian developmental state in its historical context: finance, geopolitics and bureaucracy.” Area Development and Policy 2(1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeung, Henry Wai-chung, and Liu, Weidong. 2008. “Globalizing China: the rise of mainland firms in the global economy.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 49(1), 57–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zenawi, Meles. 2006. “African development: dead ends and new beginnings.” Unpublished manuscript available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c1c0/97b483d0dd9349f969673f3d76927c32d789.pdf?_ga=2.166497336.748789566.1586279408-1454462185.1584394578.Google Scholar