Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of Melbourne
Large dams have been built across the world for hydropower, irrigation and urban water supply. In developing countries, they are mostly owned by governments and supported by loans from international lenders to finance the design and construction. Yet such projects can bring serious social and environmental problems, including the impoverishment of resettlement communities and the endangerment of freshwater species. In reaction to these problems, an anti-dam movement coalesced in the 1990s, and in the early 2000s, influential financiers including the World Bank responded by committing to reduce lending for dam projects. More recently, however, Chinese companies and agencies have been increasingly investing in developing countries and are seen as major forces driving new large dams. With reference to general concerns over a rising China in Sub-Saharan Africa, in what follows I will outline the nature of Chinese involvement in African dam building, using a case study of the Bui Dam in Ghana. I argue that Chinese players have not been going it alone to push dam-building in Africa but rather have been collaborating with non-Chinese actors on big infrastructure projects across the continent. Even with this multi-player approach, however, such projects are not guaranteed to deliver developmental outcomes, let alone to safeguard social and environmental consequences.
For more information please click: Research Brief No 16 – Nov2018 (537KB)
Dr Xiao Han joined the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies as a Research Fellow in May 2018. Her research interests include the transformation of rural China, the Chinese ‘go-out’, the techno-politics of (water) infrastructure and the political economy of development. Currently as a team member, she is working on agrarian change in China for the Centre’s ARC Discovery Project, “Remaking Rural China”, which aims to examine (re)configurations of and the relations between land, labour, and capital in China’s agricultural sector, as well as the environmental practices of different kinds of farms. Xiao completed her PhD in economic geography at the University of Melbourne. Informed by fieldwork in China and Ghana, and data collected from open sources, her doctoral thesis investigated the goals, practices and consequences of Chinese governments and corporations when building dams overseas. Xiao’s co-authored works has been published in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Journal of Cleaner Production, and Land Use Policy.