China’s Engagement with DRC’s Critical Minerals Sector: Extractivism, Developmentalism, and the Quest for a Just Transition

This Working Paper explores the multifaceted Chinese engagement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) copper and cobalt mining sector. We identified two distinctive approaches for such engagement: one led by central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) and state-backed policy financial institutions (S-PFIs), and the other by a mix of public and private Chinese companies. The paper argues that while the former approach is embedded with a developmentalist ideology by aiming to utilise resource income to promote infrastructure development, the latter follows a typical extractivist logic of profit maximisation via mineral exports. It suggests that the developmentalist and extractivist approaches have generated significant socio-economic impacts on DRC's development trajectory at the national and local levels. Both pathways also face distinctive challenges in the context of regime and policy changes in DRC in recent years. Therefore, the quest for a just transition in DRC’s mining sector warrants a better understanding of different models of Chinese engagement in this critical sector at a rather distinctive historical juncture.