Mingwei Huang

Mingwei Huang is conducting an interdisciplinary study of the contemporary spectacular reemergence of Sino-African relations, particularly Sino-African friendship, in South Africa. She is focusing on how the geopolitics of diplomatic “friendship” and transnational capital flows between China and South Africa are localized in the everyday encounters and friendships between Chinese migrants, South Africans, and African migrants in South Africa. She researches how friendship and capital are linked through productive sentiments such as amity and trust in addition to everyday social practices of exchange and transactions. In so doing, she conceptualizes how friendship and capital are mutually constitutive in a “political economy of friendship” and a local “friendship economy” in commercial spaces of transnational capital. Through ethnographic, historical, cultural, and media studies methods, Huang examines three Sino-African capital and cultural flows vis-à-vis friendship: mass Chinese tourism in Cape Town, China Malls—Chinese-import shopping malls—in Johannesburg, and PRC sponsored cultural diplomacy events in South Africa. Her research theoretically contributes to anthropological approaches to friendship, capital, globalization, and “south-south” relations.