The internationalisation of Chinese firms, institutions and people has a long and deep history, but it has risen to prominence as China’s global role has intensified over the past two decades.

Starting with piecemeal studies of the activities of certain Chinese actors in particular parts of the world, the research agenda has shifted to ‘global China’ (Lee, 2017, 2022) involving “understanding of China beyond the Chinese borders” (Lee 2022, p. 313). This broad agenda covers “The recent two-decade-long march of ‘global China’—manifested as outward flows of investment, loans, infrastructure, migrants, media, cultural programmes and international and civil society engagement [which] has left sweeping but variegated footprints in many parts of the world” (Lee 2022, p. 313). The global China framing situates the growing role of China within a dynamic, interconnected and variegated global economy (Franceschini and Loubere, 2022). It also unpicks the geoeconomics of these processes in that China’s economic statecraft blurs the line between commercial and geopolitical imperatives. However, it also reveals the multiple forms of capital and the range of actors involved, many of which operate outside the ambit of the Chinese state (Chen, 2021). Yet, there have been few reflections on the methodological challenges and opportunities of researching global China, which is our focus. REDEFINE is studying eight Chinese-backed infrastructure projects in Europe, including Germany, Greece, Hungary and the United Kingdom.

Since the first wave of empirical studies of China’s internationalisation, where many focused on interactions with African countries (e.g. Large, 2008; Power, Mohan and Tan-Mullins, 2012), there has been a wealth of studies across different continents utilising a broad range of methodologies. Heimer and Thøgersen (2006) provided a useful introduction to conducting fieldwork in China, but the relationality of global China requires more multi-sited and interdisciplinary approaches. Mawdsley, Fourie and Nauta’s (2019) collection was a path- breaking foray into these methodological challenges but was focused on the more general phenomenon of South-South cooperation, even though China does feature heavily in the book. Studying global China also produces methodological innovation involving research strategies that overcome the complexities of conducting fieldwork in diverse environments.

Our approach

Research projects are rarely straightforward, with plans often shifting due to new discoveries, unexpected challenges or constant surprises. We knew from the outset we needed to include

1. the contextual, reflecting real-world challenges
2. the exploratory, seeking to uncover insights rather than just testing hypotheses, and finally,
3. the multidimensional, looking at how we combine data from interviews, documents and observations.

REDEFINE has taken a multi-sited approach, which enables us to examine how Chinese investments adapt to different institutional and cultural contexts.

This approach, in turn, helps us avoid treating a single case as emblematic of China’s entire internationalisation strategy.

Building on this comparative foundation, REDEFINE integrated three key methods to analyse and comprehend the processes of assembling infrastructure projects. First, we applied the extended case method to create detailed, context-rich descriptions of all cases. This approach focuses on tracing the sources of small differences to external forces, diverging from traditional comparative strategies that prioritise identifying commonalities. It also situates infrastructure projects within the broader social, political and economic contexts that influence and shape them, often extending beyond their immediate environment.

Second, we utilise incorporated comparisons to explore how different cases interact with and influence one another, if at all. This method examines how Chinese infrastructure investments adapt to varying contexts and actor networks, embracing greater complexity and contingency in comparisons. It challenges the assumption of a universal ‘Chinese capitalist’ logic inherent in each case.

Third, we adopted process tracing to analyse how the eight cases evolved over time. Process tracing is a flexible qualitative methodological approach that has received much scholarly attention over the last two decades.

One purpose is to investigate a ‘case study’ through analysis of:

1. causal mechanisms
2. the sequence of events that ensue
3. the resulting observable outcome.

In other words, process tracing helps us see how something begins and ends in finer-grained detail by illuminating the key steps that constitute the temporality between cause and effect. Specifically, it reveals some of the more sober—and often mundane—realities that combine to constitute a process over a given period. This is important for a multitude of stakeholders, including those in the academy, media and policymaking circles.

One of our case studies to which we are applying the process tracing method is what we term ‘Huawei in Hungary’. Rather than a specific infrastructure project such as a port or railway development, this term captures the Chinese telecommunications firm’s activities and development in the country over time. Few outside the telecoms industry were aware of Huawei before the first Trump Administration began to chastise it for ostensible espionage activity, particularly surrounding the implementation of 5G technology. As a result, many European governments followed the United States’ lead and either expelled or disincentivised Huawei’s continued activities. Hungary remains an exception. Here, Huawei has achieved a series of successes since first entering the country in 2005. By 2020, the company employed 330 people directly (60 per cent Hungarian, 40 per cent Chinese nationals) and between 2500–2700 people indirectly, while through a web of integration with other telecom firms, provided equipment for 70 per cent of the Hungarian population.

We aim to understand how and why Huawei has continued its operations in this small central European country and expanded them. The process tracing method helps us achieve this because it permits the identification of a series of business interactions between Huawei and ‘Western’ telecoms firms that entered the country after 1989, particularly Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. In other words, these developments are the snapshots that constitute the story of ‘Huawei in Hungary’. Whether this is positive or negative is another question. The point, we hope, is that we can produce a detailed and trustworthy analysis that helps stakeholders arrive at more sober conclusions regarding Chinese-sourced investment and, as a result, view such transactions as part of a wider global whole rather than separate from it.

Our challenges

Beyond our methodological approaches and case examples, studying global China requires careful reflection on our own position in the field. Our experiences highlight how our various roles and relationships shape what and whom we can access, learn about/ from, and understand. By adopting ‘multipositionality’, we take on different roles as outsiders, insiders and mediators. REDEFINE researchers navigated complex political and economic landscapes to uncover hidden dynamics. For example, we rely on guanxi, a Chinese cultural practice of building trust and reciprocal relationships, to connect with key stakeholders and networks. This approach helped us engage with Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in various case study locations and reveal layers of relationship-based interactions that might otherwise remain hidden. This ability to adapt our research methods to diverse cultural and institutional settings has been crucial.

These layers of actors and interactions meant conducting elite interviews beyond our personal networks, allowing us to focus on people in positions of power, such as politicians in local, regional, state, or European government institutions and supranational organisations, and professionals who hold senior leadership positions and therefore significant decision-making power in businesses. Interestingly, we found we had more fruitful interactions with people not directly involved in our case studies, including former state government ministers and members of oppositional parties.

However, our reliance on guanxi relationships and our flexible roles as researchers can introduce potential bias, as these relationships are influenced by personal networks and cultural familiarity. Additionally, the process of building access in politically sensitive environments demands significant time, effort and adaptability. For example, engaging with SOEs in Duisburg required strategic navigation of trust dynamics— ranging from informal meetings over lunch to leveraging shared cultural narratives and professional experiences. While these strategies helped us gain access and foster openness, they also highlighted the difficulty of maintaining independence and objectivity as researchers. These challenges underscore the importance of self-awareness and critical reflection in ensuring that our findings are credible and meaningful.

Being aware of who you get to interview, whether elite contacts or otherwise, may lead to the possibility of the sample being skewed. Those who agree to be interviewed are often giving a particular angle. Indeed, the people who agreed to be interviewed could have been those not directly implicated or those wanting to promote a specific angle that it might not be possible to verify or triangulate. Nevertheless, we faced difficulties in accessing certain groups of research participants in the face of resistance and rejection, especially representatives of Chinese companies.

A major challenge every researcher faces is that less data is gathered than what would normally be thought of as enough in qualitative research, for example, reaching a particular sample size or theoretical saturation. So, instead of measuring whether data are sufficient through saturation or a certain number of interviews, our focus has been on getting rich data (Collett, 2024). Data richness, according to Lyn Richards (1999), depends on its relevance (so what is needed for our research question), impact (if it is evocative), complexity (if it raises many topics), and fluidity (ideas must be richly developed together).

In the current climate of multiple global crises and rapid political change, much of Europe sees the globalisation of China as increasingly risky. Yet, we would argue that risk is complex and understanding it requires the kinds of detailed, grounded research we have outlined here.

Studying global China also produced methodological innovations involving research strategies that overcame the complexities of conducting fieldwork in diverse environments. Therefore, the REDEFINE project held a two-day conference to explore this topic, discussing challenges and innovations faced by leading experts in the field. A special issue will be shared at a later date on our website: https://tinyurl.com/Researching-Global-China.

References

Chen, W. (2021) The dynamics of Chinese private outward foreign direct investment in Ethiopia: A comparison of the light manufacturing industry and the construction materials industry. PhD thesis. School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Collett, C. (2024) ‘The hustle: How struggling to access elites for qualitative interviews alters research and the researcher’, Qualitative Inquiry, 30(7), pp. 555–567.

Franceschini, I. and Loubere, N. (2022) Global China as method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heimer, M. and Thøgersen, S. (eds.) (2006) Doing fieldwork in China. NIAS Press: Copenhagen.

Large, D. (2008) ‘China and the contradictions of “non-interference” in Sudan’, Review of African Political Economy, 35(115), pp. 93–106.

Lee, C.K. (2017) The specter of global China: politics, labor, and foreign investment in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lee, C.K. (2022) ‘Global China at 20: Why, how and so what?’, The China Quarterly, 250, pp. 313–331. doi: 10.1017/S0305741022000686.

Mawdsley, E., Fourie, E. and Nauta, W. (eds.) (2019) Researching South-South development cooperation: critical reflections on the politics of knowledge production. Abingdon: Routledge.

Power, M., Mohan, G. and Tan-Mullins, M. (2012) Powering development: China’s energy diplomacy and Africa’s future. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Richards, L. (1999) ‘Data alive! The thinking behind NVivo’, Qualitative Health Research, 9(3), pp. 412–428.

PROJECT NAME

Reorienting Development: The Dynamics and Effects of Chinese Infrastructure Investment in Europe (REDEFINE)

PROJECT SUMMARY

REDEFINE will examine what China’s rise means for how we understand global development and, specifically, Europe’s place in it. REDEFINE aims to use the insights from international development to interrogate Chinese engagement in the heart of Europe and, by doing so, reorient the Eurocentric debates in the social sciences around how we define and delimit development, who drives these processes and what it means for societies and communities affected by such investments.

PROJECT LEAD PROFILE

Giles Mohan is Professor of International Development at the Open University. He has held various UK academic posts over the past 30 years and has an area specialism in West Africa. Giles’ recent work has addressed China’s engagement with Africa, supported by a series of large grants from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. REDEFINE builds on this China-Africa work to track the implications of Chinese investment in Europe.

PROJECT CONTACTS

Prof. Giles Mohan

Development Policy and Practice Discipline
The Open University Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA

Tel: +44 (0)1908 654369
Email: REDEFINE@open.ac.uk
Web: www.open.ac.uk/redefine
X: @ERedefine

FUNDING

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 885475.