Gender Impact of China’s Engagement in the Global South

As China deploys its most ambitious international policies ever, we dive into the intersection of geopolitics, regional dynamics, and gender. This comprehensive project sheds light on the gender impact of China’s global engagement via the Belt and Road Initiative, the BRICS and much more. It explores the hidden narratives behind these initiatives, and their effects on society, the environment, human rights, and especially on women in the global South. Scroll down to learn more and follow us on social media for updates.

The past two decades have witnessed a heightened research interest in the emerging field of “Global China”. This field interrogates China’s role in and its profound influence on the global stage. A myriad of studies, initiatives and media reports have focused on China’s global footprint; its overseas investments, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, the political, socio-economic, environmental and human rights implications; and its influence on geopolitics and regional dynamics. However, not enough attention has been paid to the gender aspect of Global China, and the issue of gender and sexuality has been largely ignored.

With China’s increasing global commitment to gender equality and women’s development at various international forums and in international cooperation programs, gender issues have been given greater prominence and attention in the country’s foreign policy. This has prompted researchers and activists to raise concerns about the use of gendered discourses in soft power propaganda in diplomacy and its implications for gender politics in China and across the world.

In collaboration with researchers and activists, DAWN is developing an analysis to understand China’s global economic, political and security expansion, and its profound impacts on gender equality and women’s human rights in the global South. This analytical framework paper is based on the review of existing literature on themes related to gender and Global China, including but not limited to the Chinese government’s official documents and policy guidelines, academic research as well as reports and analyses by civil society groups located both inside and outside China.

The framework examines and synthesizes the main theories, methods and arguments of the current research on this subject; identifies the knowledge gaps; and suggests topics and methodologies for further research to be conducted by scholars in the form of case studies set in different regions of the South.

DAWN Informs on China’s gender impact.

This DAWN Informs presents the main findings of eight case studies produced under DAWN’s groundbreaking research project on the gender impact of China’s engagement in the global South.

From Nigeria to the Solomon Islands or from Peru to Zimbabwe, the cases examine the profound and multidimensional implications of China’s engagement in the global South and how various sectors, including state, business, civil societies, and local communities, react to these.

Gender equality and women’s development are achievable goals and should be put high on the agenda in China’s development cooperation.
Cai Yiping

Events on China’s gender impact.

Check below some of DAWN’s events that involves the project.

Webinar Gender Impact of China’s Engagement in the Global South

This framework is organized into five sections. The first section reviews the trajectory of China’s global engagement – its transition from a planned economy to a market-oriented one, between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, by implementing a series of economic reforms and opening-up policies; China’s integration into the neoliberal global economy after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001; and China’s ongoing expansion of its global engagements since 2010 and its impacts, with the launch of the BRI and new international financial institutions (IFIs).

The second section interrogates China’s global impact by unpacking it from three distinct and interrelated angles:

(1) defending multilateralism and China’s proactive role in multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations (UN) system;

(2) reshaping the landscape of development cooperation on the global stage through development finance, aid and loans; and

(3) various initiatives by China to create new bilateral and multilateral mechanisms such as the BRI bilateral agreements, the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and China+ASEAN10, to name a few. How do these global engagements revamp global governance, shift geopolitics and influence the narratives on development and human rights? How do they affect and what implications do they have for gender equality and women’s rights domestically and internationally? These questions are at the center of the third and fourth sections of this paper.

The third section briefly examines gender politics and feminist activism in contemporary China, and the paradoxes between state policies that commit to promote gender equality and the persistence of gender inequalities.

Section four analyzes the gender discourse and practice in China’s global engagement. How is it articulated in the government’s official documents? How is it implemented in development cooperation programs? And why is there a gap between rhetoric and action?

In the last section, we propose the framework and methodology that can be applied to study the gender impact of China’s global engagement, and make recommendations for further inquiries through the prism of Global China and Southern feminist analysis. We argue that the gender impact of China’s global engagement is a co-product in a dynamic process of action, interaction and contestation involving many actors, and is best assessed in various locations simultaneously and comprehensively, especially grounded in the realities of the South. However, current related research and analyses primarily focus on the state and see China as a monolithic entity; and are embedded in narrow binary frameworks of South vs. North, China vs. the West or authoritarianism vs. liberal democracy. DAWN strongly believes that there is an urgent need to collaborate with feminist researchers from various regions of the global South to produce grounded empirical case studies. The aim of this collaboration is to challenge the narrow frameworks and contribute to knowledge production, and thus shake off Western racism and totalitarian control of knowledge. It also aims to hold states and corporate sectors, both from the South and the North, accountable for the human rights and well-being of women and people of the South, and the sustainability of the planet.

Discover how China’s evolving positions on gender equality are shaping international cooperation and development, as we unveil our findings from eight in-depth case studies from Africa, Asia, The Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Each case study will be aligned with the analytical framework paper and further explore one or more of the following questions from a regional and country context:

● What role does gender play in China’s global engagement, for example, in its strategic engagement in multilateral mechanisms such as the UN and other new institutions, and/or its negotiations of bilateral or multilateral trade agreements; its initiation of South-South cooperation narratives and practices; and its implementation of multilateral financiers’ social and environmental safeguards?

● How do Chinese investment projects, such as the BRI and other international development aid projects, influence gender equality, women’s lives, and their human rights in the local community and neighborhood?

● As a “new actor”, do China’s overseas investments and development programs differ from those of traditional donors or investors in terms of gender policy and gender-related impact assessment? If so, how? If not, why?

● How do Southern feminists and social movements strengthen women’s rights and gender equality, and obtain social and environmental justice in the face of potentially adverse impacts of Chinese foreign aid and investments?

Download now the Analytical Framework on the Gender Impact of China’s Global Engagement in the global South

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We call upon a Southern feminist vision to deconstruct the unequal power matrix, decolonize knowledge production and decentralize the state actor, regardless of whether it is located in the South or the North. We contend that the perspectives and experiences of women from the global South should be placed at the center of these analyses, which is only possible through dialogue, collaboration and solidarity.