China’s presence in neighboring countries is growing at a fast pace. One of the recent manifestations of this is Chinese “land rush” and investments in agricultural infrastructure. Mass media constantly report that Russian, Tajikistan or Kazakhstan government would lease huge areas of farmland to China; that Chinese companies would invest in chemical (pesticides) production, agricultural storage or processing companies or that Chinese small farmers occupy new niche markets (like green-houses) in bordering with China regions.

Not only journalists but also scholars inform that both small- and large-scale Chinese agricultural enterprises operating in neighboring countries have a strong commercial orientation. Even more, it is argued, that Chinese agri-businesses strongly differ from the most of host – local (national) – companies which are still in the trap of post-soviet legacy. Furthermore, it has been claimed that Chinese agri-businesses abroad differ sharply from national agrarian companies, which are prevented from being competitive by institutional or structural restrictions.

Thus, although the main priority of the workshop is Chinese agricultural businesses abroad (in particular in the Russian Far East), we also aim to discuss agriculture adjusting to institutional arrangements inside China. To be more specific agenda includes the following topics:

• recent changes in Chinese agriculture; more specifically, “capitalist” dynamics, land dispossession, capital accumulation;
• the diversity of Chinese actors (such as agrarian ‘capitalists’, peasants, smallholder farmers, farmworkers, etc.) involved in the agrarian sector of neighboring countries/border areas;
• discourses on Chinese “land grab,” “land rush” as well as practices of land property abroad;
• shifting agricultural policies and domestic/ international production regimes between China and neighboring countries (seeds production, circulation, etc.);
• infrastructure as a “socio-material assemblage,” including the role of the state and other institutions in revitalization/ redevelopment of rural areas adjoining the Chinese border;
• the use of infrastructure to normalize land acquisitions in bordering with China regions in juxtaposition to Chinese presence and/ or investment in land and infrastructure.