Tu Huynh
University of Cologne, Global South Studies Center, Department Member
- I’m currently affiliated with the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center, where I’m Associated Researche... moreI’m currently affiliated with the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Center, where I’m Associated Researcher and Principal Investigator of two Volkswagen Foundation funded research projects (https://socialinequalities.uni-koeln.de/). I previously worked as Associate Research Professor in the School of International Studies/Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies at Jinan University (Guangzhou, China). Prior to this, I was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University (Makhanda, South Africa). I was also a Research Fellow in the Centre for Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg, where I co-founded the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network, a leading international organization for China-Africa research. I received a PhD in Sociology from Binghamton University. My research focuses on indentured labor history, social identity formation (race, ethnicity, and gender), diaspora and mobility, culture and political economy, as well as South Africa and China and their roles in global south making.edit
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The article explores how the politics of South-South cooperation, namely between Africa and China, play out at the level of cultural subjectivity, implicating modes of affect and identities that are not captured by the more commonly... more
The article explores how the politics of South-South cooperation, namely between Africa and China, play out at the level of cultural subjectivity, implicating modes of affect and identities that are not captured by the more commonly employed binary framework of “friend” or “enemy.” It asks whether it is possible for the Africans and Chinese to imagine each other without the West as its geocultural dominance diminishes; and if so, how is this being made possible? As modes of transmitting and learning, cultural initiatives under the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and “Belt and Road Initiative” provide a window into both people’s understandings of one another. While necessary for building people-to-people relations, the article, relying on an analysis of data collected from Chinese websites, argues that the state-sponsored cultural exchanges largely reify existing racialized ideas of “the African” and Orientalist views of “the Chinese.” However, building on Simbao’s (2019) point about artists’ works that “push back” against dominant discourse, the article further argues and demonstrates through the journey and works of three artists (Chinese, Kenyan, and Ghanaian) that radical imaginaries reflecting the inner states of acting subjects of China-Africa engagements are available in local cultural productions, uncompromising in communicating shared beliefs and posing challenges to power relations on multiple scales.
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The article aims to give local texture to people’s, specifically Chinese, mobilities in a South African context. Through a retelling of a grandmother’s stories to her granddaughter, we argue that they offer a vision of the world that... more
The article aims to give local texture to people’s, specifically Chinese, mobilities in a South African context. Through a retelling of a grandmother’s stories to her granddaughter, we argue that they offer a vision of the world that Black and Chinese South Africans inhabited during apartheid – they disrupted the world built by the all-white government. During the apartheid period, people were forced to see the world in black and white terms, not to mention powerful and powerless. It is this reality of the past that an ancestor’s oral accounts about how her people met and interacted with people from other shores, who had different stories than hers, are important. In this article, one of the authors recalls and further reimagines these stories about people who came from afar to make their own living in South Africa, cross paths with the locals, and leave their own marks. The article also highlights the significance of “Mo-China,” the Chinese fafi gambling game in supplementing Black and Chinese South African urban livelihoods during apartheid. The article concludes by pointing out that these stories, crossing and informing worlds, are prohibited knowledge that requires new attention which debates on the Chinese presence in African contexts have neglected thus far.
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In recent years, wholesale centers that sell Chinese goods and which, most often, are owned by Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs, have proliferated across South Africa at the same time as the increase in migration of... more
In recent years, wholesale centers that sell Chinese goods and which, most often, are owned by Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs, have proliferated across South Africa at the same time as the increase in migration of individuals and capital from China. Because these centers also provide for retail sales, they are referred to as malls. While many of these malls have names that suggest their possible connection to China, the few that are named “China Town” stand out. The latter, it is argued and demonstrated here, make claims to China’s global ascendance and shed light on a conflicting relationship between Chinese diasporic communities and Chinese state politics. China Town-named malls are more than merely spaces of commerce; they also present an analytical space to think about how diverse types of Chinese actors become implicated in and negotiate their identity and relationship to China’s shifting global image and politics.
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Based on fieldwork in Guangzhou, this paper documents the activities of a group of African women traders, highlighting their role in constituting globalisation from below or a counterhegemonic globalisation that emanates from China. It... more
Based on fieldwork in Guangzhou, this paper documents the activities of a group of African women traders, highlighting their role in constituting globalisation from below or a counterhegemonic globalisation that emanates from China. It further builds on previous studies on women and development to show how neoliberal economic changes in Africa since the 1980s have forced African men into the traditionally feminine role of (informal) traders between Africa and China. Struggles for economic power between African women and men traders and representations of gender in such struggles as well as the construction of a hyper-masculine discourse in the Guangzhou context are analysed in discussing how women and men are engaged in a continual process of ‘making gender make sense’ outside of Africa.
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This paper provides an alternative reading of the Chinese mall phenomenon that has mushroomed in postapartheid South Africa, mainly after 2010. Through an analysis of the “China Town” malls, it argues that the Chinese and ethnic-Chinese... more
This paper provides an alternative reading of the Chinese mall phenomenon that has mushroomed in postapartheid
South Africa, mainly after 2010. Through an analysis of the “China Town” malls, it argues that the
Chinese and ethnic-Chinese investors are not simply tapping into a “China brand” that has become salient with
China’s emergence as a global economic power, but are also participating in a global construction of Chinese
identity that resists the Chinese state’s dominance over representations of “Chineseness.” This paper builds on
secondary literature on Chinatowns (mostly in the U.S.) and fieldwork in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces in
South Africa. It shows that China Town is not just a commercial entity that has a concentration of Chinese people
and shops, but signals a deliberate turn to historical Chinatowns that are diasporic social formations and globally
recognized as “Chinese.” The China Town malls interconnect two phenomena that differ in culture and value, one
being a response to Western exploitation and the other to China’s rise. As such, the paper asks: What is to be made
of this interconnection?
South Africa, mainly after 2010. Through an analysis of the “China Town” malls, it argues that the
Chinese and ethnic-Chinese investors are not simply tapping into a “China brand” that has become salient with
China’s emergence as a global economic power, but are also participating in a global construction of Chinese
identity that resists the Chinese state’s dominance over representations of “Chineseness.” This paper builds on
secondary literature on Chinatowns (mostly in the U.S.) and fieldwork in the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces in
South Africa. It shows that China Town is not just a commercial entity that has a concentration of Chinese people
and shops, but signals a deliberate turn to historical Chinatowns that are diasporic social formations and globally
recognized as “Chinese.” The China Town malls interconnect two phenomena that differ in culture and value, one
being a response to Western exploitation and the other to China’s rise. As such, the paper asks: What is to be made
of this interconnection?
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I address the importance of distinguishing between the Chinese state and Chinese people who, as part of their livelihood strategy, are sojourning or making Africa their home. For the Chinese people who have lived in South Africa for... more
I address the importance of distinguishing between the Chinese state and Chinese people who, as part of their livelihood strategy, are sojourning or making Africa their home. For the Chinese people who have lived in South Africa for generations, livelihood matters range from economic prospects to political autonomy, access to clean air and a different pace of life. Their current presence on the continent is part of a longer and broader history of mobility, connected to 19th-century British imperial exploitations of both Africa and Asia and to later neo-liberal policies. As significantly, distinguishing between the Chinese state and Chinese people is not only necessary against the backdrop of rising Sinophobia, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also important to do so to recognise substantial changes within the diaspora, beyond the increasing number of Chinese in Africa, in terms of gender, class and regional compositions that complicate notions of 'Chineseness'.
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Free e-copies are still available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/WYCNJPQMVICXTD4UB8IB/full?target=10.1080/13696815.2020.1824771
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UMI. ProQuest® Dissertations & Theses The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest. A racial redivisioning of society: Indentured Chinese labor in the... more
UMI. ProQuest® Dissertations & Theses The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest. A racial redivisioning of society: Indentured Chinese labor in the transformation of racial capitalism in South Africa, 1903-1910. ...