Politics of forced eviction in China-Africa relations: A case of natural resource conflict in Ghana

• Forced eviction is a political means to an economic end. • Collusions between Chinese clients and ‘uninsulated’ African patrons produces forced eviction of competing local entrepreneurs. • African patrons set up asymmetric structures and deploy coercive bureaucratic instruments to negotiate Chinese clients’ access to mineral resources. • African patrons compel dissenting artisanal and small-scale miners into capitulation to guarantee private rent accrual to elites. How do state and non-state competing economic actors and interests interact over mineralised land disputes? This research inductively shows how land-use disputes between large-scale mining (LSM) companies and artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM) are intervened by the African state. We explore a grounded theory of Sino-African neopatrimonialism to contend that collusions between Chinese clients and ‘uninsulated’ African patrons can unleash a powerful cartel that illegitimately allocates resources to Chinese companies, resulting in forced eviction of competing local entrepreneurs. In illustrating this abstraction with the Ghanaian case, we show that African patrons intervene in resource disputes between Chinese clients and African miners by setting up asymmetric structures and deploying coercive bureaucratic instruments that negotiate Chinese clients’ unfettered access to mineral resources while compelling dissenting ASM into capitulation to guarantee private rent accrual to elites. The findings demonstrate how African patrons device approaches such as forced eviction as a political means to their economic end, and the resultant local popular fury to offer a contextualisation of the growing China-Africa discourse.