Dongzhu Xu

Dongzhu Xu is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral research looks at the political economy of mineral wealth and poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), focusing in particular on resource-for-infrastructure arrangements and Chinese investment in the Copper–Cobalt Belt. He is interested in why decades of large-scale copper and cobalt extraction, together with substantial external financing, have not translated into sustained poverty reduction. 

His work is supervised by Professor Zoe Marriage and Professor Jonathan Di John. In his thesis, Dongzhu treats the 2008 Sicomines agreement and similar resource-backed deals as a distinct way of allocating mineral wealth, rather than simply as examples of “good” or “bad” governance. By bringing together debates on the natural resource curse, rent theory and global value chains, he aims to show how external finance, mining regimes and state capacity interact over time in the DRC’s cobalt economy. His research combines close reading of policy documents and company reports with analysis of sectoral and macroeconomic data, and will be complemented by qualitative fieldwork in the Greater Katanga region, including semi-structured interviews, focus groups and direct observation around key mining sites. 

Before joining SOAS, Dongzhu completed an MSc in the Political Economy of Late Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His broader academic interests span development studies, political economy, economic history and African studies, with a particular concern for how colonial legacies, patterns of state formation and external interventions shape contemporary political and economic orders. He follows ongoing debates on the energy transition, “critical minerals” and green industrial policy, especially as they relate to mineral-dependent economies in Central and Southern Africa. 

Alongside his doctoral research, Dongzhu is a regular contributor to the journal of the Institute of Area Studies at Tsinghua University, where he writes on international political economy and regional development, and he participates in the Conflict, Peace and Development research cluster at SOAS. He works in Chinese, English and French, can also read and write Spanish, and is developing further language skills to support fieldwork and archival work in Central Africa.

PhD Development Studies (in progress)

SOAS University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies)  

MSc Political Economy of Late Development, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)  

BA Politics and Economics, University of Montreal

His research sits at the intersection of development economics, political economy and economic history. He is particularly interested in critical minerals and the energy transition, rent theory, the natural resource curse and strands of new institutional economics, with a regional focus on the Global South – especially African countries. He is also interested in conflict dynamics, distributional struggles and poverty reduction in mineral-dependent economies.