This chapter summarizes the characteristics of the Chinese development approach, dubbed as coevolutionary pragmatism. It has three intertwined components: unwavering targets to promote sustainable economic development, comprehensive transformation toward a market economy and industrialization, and flexible approaches to coordinate multiple aspects and interact with partners during the transformation. It is the interaction, mutual adaptation, and consensus formation that count for advancing market economy and industrialization. Paradoxically, the lack of a defined model turns out to be the key to China’s success, as it allows diverse practices and flexible adjustments. Therefore, as an alternative to the Western model, China presents a different perspective to understand and promote development rather than a rivalry model. Actually, China and Africa’s shift from pursuing traditional values to striving for development is an integral part of the compelling global capitalism. This revelation of the nature of China-Africa coevolution can help people reflect on the destination of global development.

This chapter reviews socioenvironmental issues related to Chinese engagements in Africa. By investigating the behaviors of Chinese enterprises in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and extractive sectors, the author depicts diverse challenges in various sectors. Large state-owned enterprises and small private businesses demonstrate departing performances and understandings regarding socioenvironmental responsibility. The Chinese government constantly urges Chinese firms to improve socioenvironmental practices because of reputational concerns, but China lacks the legal framework and monitoring mechanism to effectively influence its enterprises’ operation overseas. Weak regulation in Africa often leaves problematic behaviors there unpunished. In this context, Chinese business associations and banks provide pragmatic assistance to promote corporate social responsibility among Chinese investors. In spite of a recent move toward convergence with international norms, China diverges from the West on evaluating the socioenvironmental impacts of industrial projects in the developing countries. As industrialization inevitably alters the original societal structure and natural environment, China does not insist on intact socioenvironmental preservation in developing countries. Large infrastructure projects such as dams are rather viewed as necessary for developing countries to mitigate the impact of global climate change. Emphasis is laid on balancing economic growth and socioeconomic transformation under concrete circumstances so that the development can sustain.

There are many controversies around employment practices in China-Africa cooperation. Based on solid data and in-depth interviews, this chapter examines the truth of labor issues and reasons behind them. The perception that Chinese firms hire mostly Chinese and do not bring jobs to Africans proves ungrounded. Hiring local workers is indeed eagerly desired by Chinese investors because it reduces administration burden and lowers labor costs. Surveys show that Africans make up 75–90% of the work force in Chinese firms on average. The wage levels in Chinese companies vary too, depending on skill and experience of employees. A prevailing view is that cultural differences cause tensions between Chinese and Africans with regard to “hard work” and “discipline.” The author's research suggests that the conflicting notion of work ethics is rather caused by evolving manners of social production and organization, presented in the form of time perception, during transformation from traditional agrarian societies to industrial capitalism. Using two case studies of Chinese investments in Tanzania and Ethiopia, the chapter illustrates how African workers’ attitudes and understanding are changed through concrete manufacturing operations and how the work styles of Chinese and Africans converge through interactive practices.

In the years since the second round of protests at Xing Ang and Xing Xiong described at the outset of this book, the situation in Dongguan has continued to evolve. With revenue slowing, Stella International finally closed Xing Ang in 2016 (while leaving Xing Xiong in operation). The company has since promised to “selectively reduce production capacity in China in order to improve utilization efficiency and deliver margin recovery over the medium term” (World Footwear 2018). This will likely mean more orders being directed to Stella’s facilities in Vietnam and Indonesia. And the Taiwanese shoe giant is not alone: with rising Chinese wages, more and more businesses are rerouting their supply chains abroad (Interview 82). Meanwhile, retail and finance are making inroads into the Pearl River Delta’s sweatshop wasteland. A scan of Baidu Maps shows that a luxury mall with foreign clothing stores and a Pizza Hut has opened next door to the old Xing Ang plant. Dongguan’s train station, previously bustling, can be surprisingly empty now – as can the wide roads around it. Old factories are turning into warehouses for e-commerce companies or standing empty with signs for rent. Migrants are staying in the countryside, waiting for an uptick, or finding jobs in firms that have moved inland, closer to their homes (Group Interview 114). The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, dampened industrial activity further. There is a feeling that an era of intense movement in Chinese labor relations is drawing to a close, and it is not clear what lies ahead.

The previous chapter focused on the causes of different forms of worker resistance. Specifically, I reviewed the existing scholarship on Chinese labor unrest and provided fresh evidence, in the shape of a new dataset and government statistics, that resistance in China is not only rising but also increasingly boundary-spanning or transgressive in nature. Moreover, I showed that, owing to particular local combinations of sectors and worker demographics – recipes for resistance – this dynamic is more evident in some parts of the country than others. Now, I begin an extended exploration of the consequences of resistance for the state. It should not be controversial to argue that the quantitative and qualitative shift in contention underway places tremendous pressure on authorities, especially in those areas where the shift is most pronounced. To make such a claim begs the question, though, of how, exactly, that pressure is exerted. This chapter is devoted to this “how” question. Answering it requires a less monolithic understanding of “the state.” In particular, it demands an approach that acknowledges that, at the end of the day, decisions about ruling China’s contentious workplaces are not made by some abstract “regime” but instead by individual planners in the great gated government compounds of provincial capitals. Or by cadres from the official trade union pulled from their lunches to calm disputes.

This chapter examines key assertions about the nature of law and morality under the Xi Jinping administration, identifying that these assertions have been to frame and embed the Chinese Communist Party leadership’s ambitions ‘to lead over everything’ through greater supervision and discipline, including promoting morality-based ‘self-discipline’. In doing so, this chapter firstly looks at the rule of law discourse in the Xi era: how it has come to describe not only state law but also Party rules and modes of governance, including ‘governing the country by moral virtue’. This chapter then identifies how the current discourse has reignited the ideological import of morality from the Mao era and imperial political ideas to affirm the Party’s contemporary moral supremacy to ‘govern the nation according to law’ through socialist core values. Thus in China today, a particular brand of socialist morality is integrated into the overall legal–political mix to shape and justify the ideology of law–morality amalgam being instrumental to the Party’s ambition to bring about a rejuvenated and spiritually civilised well-off society.