Ning Leng, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, joins Dr. Monika Prusinowska —Ramon y Cajal Fellow at the University of Barcelona's Public International Law Department, who serves as guest host for this episode— to discuss how the Chinese state structures its relationship with Chinese companies, and what that means when those companies expand into Latin America. Drawing on the findings of her first book Politicizing Business (Cambridge University Press, 2025), they examine the mechanisms through which the Chinese government deploys both state-owned and private enterprises for political ends —from visibility projects to protest management— and how those patterns play out, with uneven results, in Latin American markets. The conversation also addresses the legal debate over whether Chinese SOEs should be treated as a single economic group in public procurement —using the Bogotá Metro bid as a recent case— and the findings of a survey of 20,000 respondents across 10 Global South countries on perceptions of foreign direct investment, where Chinese projects generate far less resistance than commonly assumed.
This episode is the result of a collaboration between Fundación Andrés Bello, the Public International Law Department of the University of Barcelona, and the Cologne International Forum, whose financial support made it possible.
About the guests:
- Ning Leng is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and a specialist in China's political economy. She is the author of Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which examines how the Chinese state systematically deploys companies —both state-owned and private— for political ends. Her research covers China's infrastructure politics, mechanisms of authoritarian control, public opinion toward China in the Global South, and the legal influence of Chinese companies in Latin America. She is currently working on her second book on the relationships between Chinese companies, the Beijing government, and host-country governments in South America. She is a Wilson China Fellow for 2025–2026 and a Penn Project Fellow on the Future of US-China Relations for 2026–2027. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
- Dr. Monika Prusinowska is a Ramon y Cajal Fellow at the Public International Law Department of the University of Barcelona. Her professional perspective has been shaped by nearly a decade of experience in China, where she worked at the China-EU School of Law at the China University of Political Science and Law, served as foreign counsel at one of the country's largest law firms, collaborated with Asian arbitration institutions, and was a research associate with the Oxford University China, Law and Development Project. Her research focuses on the legal connections between China and the rest of the world, covering dispute resolution, the legal implications of Chinese foreign investment, and China's role in the energy transition. She currently co-leads, together with Dr. Daniel Sprick, a research project on the legal ramifications of Chinese investment presence in Latin America. She serves as Vice-President of the Board of the European China Law Studies Association.
Ning Leng's recommendations:
- Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China's Overseas Development Program — published in 2022 by Cambridge University Press, co-authored by a team of five researchers largely affiliated with AidData at William & Mary. Presents new data on Chinese investment and lending worldwide.
- Salt: A World History — published in 2002. Traces human history through salt as its central thread.
Recording date: June 20, 2025
Café & Seda es un podcast patrocinado por la Fundación Andrés Bello – Centro de Investigación Chino Latinoamericano
