The Belt and Road Podcast

Cotton Diplomacy in Central Asia: Dr. Irna Hofman on China in Tajikistan and Beyond

Erik Myxter-iino and Juliet Lu Episode 52

Just across the Xinjiang border, China is investing in a range of sectors. Infrastructure and road construction are booming as in many other places, but cotton investments dominate and are seen as a distinct type. Cotton is considered a strategic crop both to China and Tajikistan and is embedded in a range of elite networks and state power. Cotton Diplomacy is one of many things we cover in this episode, listen in!

Read more of Dr. Hofman's work: 

  1. Chinese Cotton Diplomacy in Tajikistan: Greasing the Ties by Reviving the Cotton Economy
  2. In the Interstices of Patriarchal Order: Spaces of Female Agency in Chinese-Tajik Labour Encounters
  3. Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan's trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change


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Juliet