Everyday politics of global China: looking to, reflecting on, and enacting authority in rural Tajikistan

Abstract

The visible manifestations of Global China, and the responses these manifestations elicit, are at the centre of much of the scholarly literature on, and popular interest in, China's growing global presence. What is less often considered is what China's role in foreign jurisdictions implies for state–society relations in those countries. This article, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Tajikistan in 2020 and 2021, examines encounters between Chinese companies and Tajik bureaucrats, farmers and labourers. It highlights three dynamics: (1) Tajik labourers working on Chinese companies’ fields turn to authority when encountering injustice: they express sovereign agency and a desire ‘for the state’; (2) labourers’ and farmers’ experiences with Chinese companies prompt people to rethink their relationship with authority; and (3) bureaucrats exercise the authority of the state vis-à-vis Chinese actors. They ‘hyper-follow’ the law. The article demonstrates that Chinese companies introduce new sets of relationships, thereby affecting state and legal consciousness. In the context of starkly contrasting perceptions about China in Tajikistan, encounters with Chinese companies elicit responses that reveal that contradictions lie at the core of perceptions of what the Tajik state is, and should do.