The worldwide expansion of investment from the PRC has attracted widespread attention. But there are very few ethnographic, ground-up studies of how the takeover of existing companies by Chinese management or the setting up of new ones with Chinese management and local staff affects labour relations, management norms, the lives of staff, and interactions with surrounding society. Existing literature tends to be divided between those who accuse China of resource grabbing and disregard for labour rights and the environment, and those who point to the benefits of infrastructure construction and job creation. Both of these literatures tend to be ideologically inflected and largely treat "China" as a unitary actor working towards a shared goal and/or promoting a specific "model." This approach overestimates the impact of Chinese investment on macropolitical systems and underestimates their effect on local life-worlds and aspirations. Additionally, almost all existing studies focus on Africa.

Yet, working under expatriate management dispatched from China is becoming an increasingly common situation for industrial, agricultural and service workers across the world. There is a need for extended, grounded fieldwork to understand the changes this situation brings. Moreover, exploring commonalities and differences across sites of engagement in different social, economic and political environments would permit a better understanding of the adaptation of Chinese management and a global workforce to each other.