Chinese extractivism, land dispossession, and displacements in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This article analyses land dispossession, displacement, and environmental degradation linked to Chinese extractive activities through a Southern green criminological and state crime lens. Methodologically, the study draws on a systematic desk-based analysis of 36 academic articles, policy documents, NGO reports, and investigative media sources published between 2000 and 2024. These materials were thematically analysed across three case-study sites (Mutoko, Hwange, and the areas around the Great Dyke) to identify patterns of harm, victimisation, and state–corporate complicity. The findings demonstrate that Chinese mining operations, enabled by Zimbabwean state actors, have produced cumulative economic, socio-cultural, environmental, and health-related harms, including livelihood erosion, desecration of sacred sites, biodiversity loss, and heightened community vulnerability. Rather than isolated governance failures, these outcomes reflect structured forms of green crime and lawfare, in which legal and regulatory mechanisms are selectively mobilised to facilitate extractivism and suppress resistance. The article contributes to green criminology by foregrounding communal tenure, culturally embedded harms, and South–South extractivism as analytically generative sites for theorising environmental crime in the Global South.