Business Borderlands: China's Overseas State Agribusiness

In the context of widespread interests in China's agro‐state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), this article starts demystifying four narratives prevailing internationally. In this intellectual landscape, the article coins an innovative approach, ‘farm as business borderland’ to investigate an agro‐SOE in Tanzania. Based on the ethnographic case study, the article presents the tensions arising between the case farm and its Beijing headquarters on the one hand, and between Chinese managers and local stakeholders on the other. The authors examine the reasons why the travelling business bureaucracy rationalities from Beijing to Tanzania works and how this is adapted locally in the farm's daily practices. The authors also explore why and how Chinese managers' footloose expatriate lifestyle is not as relevant as normally expected in constructing convergence with locals. Finally the article discusses the implications of the new approach on international development inquiry and global governance practices.