How different are the UK and China? Investor countries in comparative perspective

Abstract

This article compares the "land grab" activities of two major capital exporting countries, China and the United Kingdom. I argue that specifics such as the home country's industrial set-up, development challenges and ideological framing are critical to understanding what is occurring from an investor country perspective, while explanations based on differences between the countries' political-economic systems are overrated. For both countries, projects considered to be land grabs are part of a range of distinct, often conflicting project-level rationales. And these rationales fit equally as well within the liberal development paradigms of efficiency, productivity and growth as they do within the resource security paradigm prevalent in the land grab debate.