Encounters and Entanglements: Localizing Global China in Laos and Vietnam (EE-LaoViet)

 

Principal Investigators: Vanina Bouté (EHESS Paris) and Oliver Tappe (Gobal South Studies Center, University of Cologne)

Research Fellows: Sandra Kurfürst (Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne), Emmanuel Pannier (IRD Paris), Grégoire Schlemmer (IRD Paris), Simon Rowedder (National University of Singapore)

PhD Students: Jade Thavixay (EHESS Paris) and Quang Minh Tô (University of Cologne)

The northern mainland Southeast Asian borderlands share a long history of economic, political, and cultural entanglements with China that have waxed and waned over the centuries. During the last few decades, the Chinese presence in the region has increased sharply through a growth in Chinese investment, petty trade and related migration dynamics. Against the backdrop of current debates on the expansion of “Global China” in many areas across the world, the French-German research project EE-LaoViet investigates the relationship between Chinese actors and local communities in northern Laos and Vietnam on the ground. 

How do local communities perceive, resist, negotiate, or even appropriate “Global China”? To grasp these encounters and entanglements, the applicants focus on emerging urban centres in the Sino-Southeast Asian borderlands that often mark historical trading hubs and at present constitute key places of economic and cultural exchange. Such places are privileged sites for exploring the everyday socialities, gendered mobilities and class dynamics that Global China provokes locally.

EE-LaoViet (funded by DFG and ANR) brings together eight researchers from Paris and Cologne with three overarching objectives: carrying out fine-grained anthropological research in the China-SE Asia borderlands, providing academic training and development opportunities both in Europe and Southeast Asia, and strengthening the German-French research networks on Southeast Asia.