Description
This paper counters the assumption that China’s successful economic relations with the Global South, particularly in Asia, can be ascribed to compatibility between China’s economic ethos and local understandings of economic cooperation. Taking from 43 interviews with local elites during fieldwork in Uzbekistan, I debunk the proximity of Chinese and Uzbekistani economic worldviews by investigating local agency and resistance vis-à-vis China’s Sinocentric economic civilisational narrative of historical cooperation along the Silk Roads. While China is seen as a foreign power and its (neo)colonial potential in Central Asia is present in perceptions from Uzbekistan, historical economic narratives about connectivity along the Silk Roads are routinely used by Uzbekistani elites to justify close economic ties with China. This paper joins explorations of non-Eurocentric Global Political Economy and discusses this contradiction by looking at Uzbekistan’s own perception of its role along the Silk Roads. I claim that local elites counter Uzbekistan’s peripherality in economic corridors between centres of economic power. While accepting normative discussions with China’s narratives, Uzbekistan’s elites frame them locally recentring them on domestic priorities, therefore directly influencing the development of investment projects.
