Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
11 - High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Informal exchanges and contending connectivity along the shadow silk roads
- 2 Fragmented sovereignty and unregulated flows: The Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor
- 3 In and out of the shadows: Pakistan-China trade across the Karakoram Mountains
- 4 Circulations in shadow corridors: Connectivity in the Northern Bay of Bengal
- 5 Past and present: Shadows of the China-Ladakh-Pakistan routes
- 6 Formal versus informal practices: Trade of medicinal and aromatic plants via Trans- Himalayan Silk Road
- 7 Formal versus informal Chinese presence: The underbelly of hope in the Western Balkans
- 8 State approaches to non-state interactions: Cross-border flows in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan
- 9 Integration in post-Soviet Central Asia: Shadow-economy practices and the cross-Eurasian flow of commodities
- 10 In the shadow of constructed borderlands: China’s One Belt One Road and European economic governance
- 11 High-end globalization and low-end globalization: African traders across Afro-Asia
- Index
- Publications / Global Asia
Summary
Abstract
This chapter describes low-end globalization – the informal economy; the shadow economy – as practised by African entrepreneurs in Guangzhou, China. It shows how low-end and high-end globalization are ideal types, with individual entrepreneurs weaving between them in terms of sending copies or original goods, paying bribes or not, and numerous other areas. The chapter addresses these types of globalization in terms of contracts vs. reputation, legality vs. illegality, bureaucratic procedures vs. personal linkages, and universalism vs. particularism. It examines how these idealtype dichotomies play out in entrepreneurs’ actual practices and choices in a variety of complex and carefully calculated ways. The geopolitics of high- and low-end globalization as they are practised and developed by individual entrepreneurs within global trade are also examined.
Keywords: Low-end globalization, high-end globalization, African entrepreneurs in China, contracts, copies, bribes
Introduction
Globalization in the developed world is typically characterized by the goods and services of multinational corporations, such as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Apple, Samsung, Sony, Starbucks, Facebook, and Google. This is what I term ‘high-end globalization’, which is typically practised by vast organizations with billion-dollar budgets, global advertising campaigns, and battalions of lawyers. However, there is another type: ‘low-end globalization’, which I define as ‘the transnational flow of people and goods involving relatively small amounts of capital and informal, sometimes semi-legal or illegal transactions, commonly associated with “the developing world”’ but, in fact, is apparent across the globe (Mathews, 2011: 19-20). This is globalization as experienced by most of the world's people, as practised by traders with a few friends or family members, who buy a relatively small quantity of goods, often knock-offs or copies, and who use bribery to get them through customs. These goods are typically sold by street vendors or on sidewalk stalls rather than in malls or department stores.
Low-end globalization has been analysed by various scholars in recent years, including Hart (1973), Portes, Castells, and Benton (1989), Hansen and Vaa (2004), and Neuwirth (2011), and is often referred to as the ‘informal economy’. This relates to the formal economy as low-end globalization does to high-end globalization. I suggest that the latter terms are more appropriate than the former, because the world is becoming increasingly linked, and national economies cannot be seen as separate entities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shadow Exchanges along the New Silk Roads , pp. 267 - 286Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020