Performing Participation: Rethinking Chinese Firms’ Role in the Belt and Road Initiative

You are invited to a seminar titled Performing Participation: Rethinking Chinese Firms’ Role in the Belt and Road Initiative, hosted by the Belt and Road Initiative Research Cluster at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Speaker: Dr Wendy Leutert (Indiana University)
Date: Thursday, 16 February 2023
Time: 4pm – 5:30pm (SGT)
Venue: FASS AS7 Seminar Room 01-19 | The Shaw Foundation Building, Block AS7, #01-19, 5 Arts Link, Singapore 117570
Registration: Microsoft Forms

Performing Participation: Rethinking Chinese Firms’ Role in the Belt and Road Initiative (with Abigail Coplin, Vassar College)

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a global economic campaign and signature foreign policy initiative of China and its leader Xi Jinping. How do Chinese companies respond to the BRI, what activities do they actually conduct, and why? This talk presents initial findings from a systematic investigation of BRI rhetoric and reported activities for all Chinese firms publicly listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2013-2020. It finds that Chinese firms respond to the BRI with both rhetoric and action, including a variety of non-commercial activities. As Chinese companies react to dual logics of political legitimacy and market profit, political performativity becomes a form of strategic behaviour.

Wendy Leutert is Visiting Researcher at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, and Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University. Her research focuses on the reform and global expansion of China’s state-owned enterprises. Currently she is a Fulbright-Hays Fellow with the U.S. Department of Education (2022-23) and a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (2021-23). She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University.