Rethinking China’s ‘Land Grabs’: Chinese Land Investments in Central Asia

Abstract

In recent years, China’s rapid economic growth has been coupled with a rising demand for natural resources. Great international concern has arisen over China’s land acquisitions for agricultural and biofuel production, pejoratively called “land grabbing”. Contrarily, when looking at China’s land acquisitions in a global context, it is not that much different from land acquisitions by other countries and corporate players. In this sense, there are various parallels and differences between the governance of Chinese “land grabbing” versus a “globalization with Chinese characteristics”.