Cotton Diplomacy in Central Asia: Dr. Irna Hofman on China in Tajikistan and Beyond

The Belt and Road Podcast

Just across the Xinjiang border, China is investing in a range of sectors. Infrastructure and road construction are booming as in many other places, but cotton investments dominate and are seen as a distinct type. Cotton is considered a strategic crop both to China and Tajikistan and is embedded in a range of elite networks and state power. Cotton Diplomacy is one of many things we cover in this episode, listen in!
Read more of Dr. Hofman's work:

1. Chinese Cotton Diplomacy in Tajikistan: Greasing the Ties by Reviving the Cotton Economy
2. In the Interstices of Patriarchal Order: Spaces of Female Agency in Chinese-Tajik Labour Encounters
3. Towards a geography of window dressing and benign neglect: The state, donors and elites in Tajikistan's trajectories of post-Soviet agrarian change

Recommendations
Irna

• The People's Map
• Host an event bringing together all the podcast interviewees!

Erik

• Embrace home design DIY!
• Listen to MeatLoaf Bat Outta Hell 2 album especially

Juliet

• The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2010)
• The Power and Business of Hip-Hop: A Reading List on an American Art Form. Stories of hi-hop’s genius, influence, struggle, and endurance
• Overcoming Challenges to the Research Environment in China, Harvard Fairbank Center with YuenYuen Ang, Liz Perry, Denise Ho and Rob Weller (Summary)
• This Tik Tok that Erik sent me making fun of podcast hosts that do recommendations at the end lol