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zf_1_2024_2025_81_109_kaufmann_remund
Journal article

Swiss-Chinese Entanglements : Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on Transnational Economic Collaborations

BP2-STS

  • 2025
Published in:
  • Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History. - ZZF – Centre for Contemporary History: Zeithistorische Forschungen. - 2025, vol. 21 (2024/2025), p. 81-109
Swiss-Chinese economic entanglements
China
Switzerland
contemporary history
social and cultural anthropology
ethnography
oral history
interdisciplinarity
economic relations
joint ventures
English This article explores Swiss-Chinese economic entanglements since the 1970s. First, we show how China opened its economy to foreign direct investment (FDI), with Switzerland as a pioneer for Joint Ventures (JVs) in China (1970s–2000s). Second, we outline how Chinese technologies spread abroad, focusing on Chinese telecommunication companies in Switzerland (2000s–2020s). Representatives from the Swiss companies envisioned immense market opportunities in China. Their Chinese counterparts saw JVs as an opportunity to integrate into the world’s production system and acquire technological know-how as well as foreign currency. Building on and further developing this knowledge has enabled Chinese companies such as Huawei to become global market leaders. Technologies and investments are now making their way back to Europe, although not without contestation. In order to better understand Sino-Swiss and other global economic interactions, we need to creatively combine historical and ethnographic methods. This approach highlights the motivations and debates at both the giving and receiving ends, and how they change over time, thereby challenging one-sided narratives of Western and Chinese global capital flows and technology acquisitions.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département des sciences sociales
Language
  • English
Classification
Arts, Human and Social Science
License
CC BY-SA
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/334050
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