The State and Its Infrastructure Fantasies: Domestic and International

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Infrastructure development is fundamentally linked to statehood and territoriality. For example, railway development was crucial to the early phase of capitalist development in many countries, expanding national territories, establishing financial systems and reinforcing state control over peripheral areas. Indeed, states engage infrastructure development for dual purposes: extending power across society and driving socio-economic transformation. China is trying to accelerate its infrastructure development, and this panel discusses the actor and factors that most decisively shape China’s experience and its implications. This panel shows that China aspires to pioneer something that no other country has successfully done before—by accelerating infrastructure development to strengthen its geostrategic positioning via ‘state-led’ globalization. China is building national champions that can concurrently solve domestic transportation problems and compete at the international level and use state powers to create opportunities for them to extend China’s influence. This phenomenon is also novel because infrastructure development and its associated industrial policies have been a national endeavour constrained by physical boundaries.

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Individual Presentations

• The Rise and Fall of Economic Centered Coalitions in BRI Transportation Projects - Keren Zhu, Davidson College

• Does the Chinese-Sponsored Railway in Kenya Buy Hearts and Minds for China? - Xiaonan Wang, Baruch College, CUNY; Yuan Wang

• China’s State-Owned Enterprises: Managed Competition and Multi-Level Structure - Kyle Chan, Princeton University

• Securing China’s Interest Abroad: Global Infrastructure and Domestic Politics - Wendy Leutert, Indiana University; Isaac B. Kardon, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

• When Planning Meets the Market: Industrial Policy and Electric Vehicles in China - Karl Yan, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Chair

• Selina Ho National University of Singapore

Discussant

• Xiao Ma Peking University