Strange

Infrastructure is at the heart of China’s presence in global

development and is also central to larger debates about
Chinese influence. This Element provides a comprehensive
account of major Chinese government-financed infrastructure
projects in the Global South since 1949. Using new datasets,
it demonstrates that Chinese global infrastructure is distinct Global China
in terms of its historical tenacity and massive contemporary
scope. But this does not imply that contemporary Chinese
global infrastructure or the Belt and Road Initiative should be
studied in a vacuum. Historical and comparative perspectives
show that contemporary projects often emerge based on
similar political logics to those that shaped infrastructure

Chinese Global Infrastructure

Chinese Global
investment in earlier periods of Chinese history and other
international contexts. The Element then examines how
infrastructure projects have created both purposeful and

Infrastructure
unintended sources of influence by serving as valuable but risky
political capital for host country governments as well as the
Chinese government.

About the Series Series Editor

The Cambridge Elements series Ching Kwan Lee
Global China showcases thematic, University of
region- or country-specific studies California,
on China’s multifaceted global
engagements and impacts. Each title,
written by a leading scholar of the
Los Angeles
Austin Strange

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subject matter at hand, combines
a succinct, comprehensive and
up-to-date overview of the
debates in the scholarly literature
with original analysis and a clear
argument.

Cover image: Dimec / Shutterstock ISSN 2632-7341 (online)

ISSN 2632-7333 (print)
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press
 Elements in Global China
edited by
Ching Kwan Lee
University of California

CHINESE GLOBAL
INFRASTRUCTURE

Austin Strange
The University of Hong Kong
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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 Chinese Global Infrastructure

Elements in Global China

DOI: 10.1017/9781009090902
First published online: November 2023

Austin Strange
The University of Hong Kong
Author for correspondence: Austin Strange, [email protected]

Abstract: Infrastructure is at the heart of China’s presence in global

development and is also central to larger debates about Chinese
influence. This Element provides a comprehensive account of major
Chinese government-financed infrastructure projects in the Global
South since 1949. Using new datasets, it demonstrates that Chinese
global infrastructure is distinct in terms of its historical tenacity and
massive contemporary scope. But this does not imply that
contemporary Chinese global infrastructure or the Belt and Road
Initiative should be studied in a vacuum. Historical and comparative
perspectives show that contemporary projects often emerge based on
similar political logics to those that shaped infrastructure investment in
earlier periods of Chinese history and other international contexts. The
Element then examines how infrastructure projects have created both
purposeful and unintended sources of influence by serving as valuable
but risky political capital for host country governments as well as the
Chinese government.

Keywords: China, infrastructure, development finance, international

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press

development, international relations

© Austin Strange 2023

ISBNs: 9781009486910 (HB), 9781009088343 (PB), 9781009090902 (OC)
ISSNs: 2632-7341 (online), 2632-7333 (print)
 Contents

1 Questions about Infrastructure and Influence 1

2 The Lineage of Chinese Overseas Development Projects 7

3 Chinese Global Infrastructure: High-Profile and Prestige

Projects 19

4 The Infrastructure-Influence Nexus 43

5 The Past, Present, and Future of Chinese Global

Infrastructure 68

References 74
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 Chinese Global Infrastructure 1

1 Questions about Infrastructure and Influence

Infrastructure is central to China’s reemergence in global development since the
late 1990s. Around that time, the Chinese government began financing overseas
development projects at a breathtaking pace. Since 2000, it has committed
hundreds of billions of dollars for projects in transportation, energy, industry,
water, and other infrastructure-heavy sectors. The Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI), launched in 2013 to promote connectivity along a broadly envisaged
overland “belt” in Eurasia and a maritime “road” spanning several regions,
accelerated this trend, and China soon became the largest bilateral provider of
development finance in the Global South (Dreher et al. 2022). Today, physical
infrastructures such as roads, highways, railroads, bridges, ports, dams, power
plants, factories, mines, pipelines, stadiums, government buildings, and event
venues visually embody China’s massive, complicated role as a provider of
development capital.
China’s global infrastructure spree has attracted widespread international
attention, particularly in the United States and other liberal democracies con-
cerned about China’s growing economic power, as well as in developing
countries that host Chinese-financed projects. Debates are contentious and
often polarized. Advocates appreciate the speed, efficiency, and lack of bureau-
cratic red tape with which China finances and builds development “hardware”
(Wade 2008; Shikwati, Adero, and Juma 2022). Critics warn that China is
a strategic, opaque lender determined to extract natural resources and policy
concessions while making recipient countries less prosperous, more debt-laden,
and less democratic (Naim 2007; Chellaney 2017). Other skeptics contend that
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Chinese infrastructure is economically wasteful, consisting of “useless build-

ings” and roads to nowhere.1 The BRI’s first decade has intensified this debate
by providing opportunities for enthusiasts and skeptics alike to gather anecdotes
as datapoints for their respective claims.
Concerns about Chinese overseas infrastructure in particular have fueled
larger assertions about China’s global economic influence. Outside suspicion
toward Chinese overseas infrastructure projects is of course not new, much less
did it originate with the BRI. For example, the “rogue aid” label first popular-
ized by Foreign Policy in 2007 suggested that China offers aid and infrastruc-
ture abroad for “boosting international alliances that advance China’s growing
global influence” (Naim 2007, 97; emphasis added). Decades earlier, Cold War-
era Chinese global infrastructure projects were similarly criticized by Western
observers as tools of an expansionist foreign policy designed to accumulate
influence and spread political ideology (Large 2008).
1
www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/australia-hits-out-at-chinese-aid-to-pacific/9316732.
 2 Global China

Today, such sentiments are even stronger. According to some accounts,

China’s influence is advancing in lockstep with its economic development.
The US Department of State is publicly operating on this assumption, asserting
in 2020 that China’s “global reach and international influence have expanded
accordingly” following four decades of rapid growth (Office of the Secretary of
State 2020, 40). Chinese global infrastructure is often seen as an important
influence tool within this narrative. Observers have suggested that China is
“weaponizing” the BRI to bring other countries into its orbit (Russel and Berger
2020). In particular, the opaqueness of Chinese policy bank-issued loans for
infrastructure creates potential for massive liabilities, including “hidden debt”
that China might shield from the international community and wield as a “debt
trap” to exercise influence over other countries (Chellaney 2017; Gelpern et al.
2022).
This viewpoint has been popular in the corridors of power within the United
States amid mounting bilateral tensions. The US 2017 National Security
Strategy asserts that “China’s infrastructure investment and trade strategies
reinforce its geopolitical aspirations” (Trump 2017). In 2018 Vice President
Mike Pence contended that “China uses so-called ‘debt diplomacy’ to expand
its influence,” and that for China’s development finance to developing coun-
tries, “the benefits invariably flow overwhelmingly to Beijing” (Pence 2018).
A year later, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Beijing for
brokering “corrupt infrastructure deals in exchange for political influence.”2
In 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that many BRI host
countries ”feel pressured to take bad deals on terms set by others,” tacitly
referring to China’s influence over these governments.3
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American anxieties about the consequences of Chinese global infrastructure

are shared by other governments. French President Emmanuel Macron stated in
2018 that new Silk Roads built along the BRI are “a tool to promote new
international standards, rules and norms.”4 The same year, Penny Wong, now
Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, remarked that the BRI “is a game-
changer” that “employs economic power as an expression of strategic power”
and represents “a fundamental change in the way that strategic business is
done.”5 Host country governments have also occasionally perceived Chinese
infrastructure projects as influence conduits. As discussed in Section 4, former

2
www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/08/mike-pompeo-invokes-thatcher-push-harder-
line-china-huawei.
3
www.state.gov/a-free-and-open-indo-pacific/.
4
www.reuters.com/article/us-china-france-idUSKBN1EX0FU.
5
www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chinas-massive-global-infrastructure-spending-a-game-chan
ger-for-world-power-says-labors-penny-wong-20180123-h0n09g.html.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 3

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 2018 criticized “unfair”

infrastructure deals signed by his predecessor that would disproportionately
benefit China and leave Malaysia “indebted,” and later advised other infrastruc-
ture-seeking countries to “regulate or limit influences from China.”6
Concerned governments have begun backing rhetoric with bilateral and
multilateral policy responses. Both the United States and Japan have notably
eschewed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a Chinese-led
multilateral, infrastructure-focused development bank founded in 2015. In
2018, the US Congress passed the Better Utilization of Investments Leading
to Development (BUILD) Act, which enabled the formation of the
Development Finance Corporation designed in part to finance infrastructure
alternatives to Chinese-financed projects. In November 2019, Australia, Japan,
and the United States launched the “Blue Dot Network” to monitor the quality
of global infrastructure projects, including those financed and built by China. In
December 2021 the European Union (EU) established the Global Gateway and
in June 2022 the Group of Seven (G7) unveiled the Partnership for Global
Infrastructure Investment (PGII), formerly Build Back Better World (B3W),
ostensibly to provide alternative infrastructure initiatives to the BRI. The United
States claims that PGII will deliver “game-changing projects to close the
infrastructure gap in developing countries, strengthen the global economy and
supply chains, and advance U.S. national security.”7
Researchers have been more cautious in questioning and qualifying asser-
tions about Chinese infrastructure and influence. But policy and popular debates
have largely abandoned nuance and clarity in favor of a linear narrative that
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pegs China’s influence to its global infrastructure and other investments, even as
many observers possess strong doubts about the economic viability and future
of the BRI. This has primed audiences to fixate on the potential influence
benefits of infrastructure for China while downplaying its potential risks.
Moreover, despite enormous policy, media, and academic interest, the con-
ceptual and empirical contours of Chinese global infrastructure remain surpris-
ingly unclear. A large literature has unpacked the nature and impacts of different
forms of Chinese overseas development capital (e.g. Alden 2007; Bräutigam
2009; Lee 2017; Dreher et al. 2022). But there are few if any systematic
accounts of Chinese overseas infrastructure, which instead is often bundled
into more general studies of Chinese aid, lending, and investment. Moreover,
existing measures of infrastructure often rely on indirect measures of financial

6
www.reuters.com/article/uk-china-malaysia-trade-idUKKCN1L5072; www.straitstimes.com/
asia/se-asia/beware-of-china-debt-trap-malaysias-mahathir-tells-the-philippines.
7
www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/26/fact-sheet-president-biden-
and-g7-leaders-formally-launch-the-partnership-for-global-infrastructure-and-investment/.
 4 Global China

flows rather than actual infrastructure projects. For example, researchers

employing statistical analyses often proxy for infrastructure by aggregating
dollars committed to infrastructure-intensive sectors such as energy, transport,
and industry, or to financial flow types such as loans, lines of credit, export
buyer’s and seller’s credits, and other instruments (e.g. Blair, Marty, and
Roessler 2022; Zeitz 2021; Dreher et al. 2022). Qualitative research that
employs interviews, case studies, site visits, or other approaches has carefully
examined many individual Chinese-supported infrastructure projects around
the world, but struggles to generate scalable, systematic inferences due to local
contextual factors.
In addition, existing accounts of the BRI and Chinese overseas infrastructure
offer remarkably little comparative or historical context for their claims. This
recency bias discounts both earlier eras of Chinese global infrastructure and
preexisting knowledge from other fields about domestic and international
infrastructure projects. It also makes it difficult to assess whether and how
contemporary Chinese global infrastructure is distinctive in its motives, fea-
tures, and impacts.
China’s “infrastructure-influence nexus,” that is, the ways in which infra-
structure potentially generates influence, remains similarly nebulous despite
immense curiosity. Many existing accounts assume that infrastructure creates
Chinese influence but do not specify how this occurs.8 Most research has
focused on high-level policy outcomes, such as China’s ability to finance and
build infrastructure in exchange for diplomatic and political support by other
governments, though evidence suggests that rising powers like China also care
deeply about “winning hearts and minds” among foreign public audiences
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(e.g. Brazys and Dukalskis 2019). In general, few studies have rigorously
considered how infrastructure in particular might generate influence for
China’s government (e.g. Hillman 2019a; Ho 2020).
In short, the BRI has attracted immense public and scholarly attention as
a global infrastructure drive since its launch a decade ago. But despite this
curiosity, we have surprisingly little clarity about what Chinese global infra-
structure actually refers to, or how it impacts China’s pursuit of international
influence.
This Element offers a comprehensive account of Chinese global infrastruc-
ture and helps address the aforementioned questions in three steps. First, it

8
This is symptomatic of a larger challenge of measuring how China’s growing material resources
translate into influence. Other work shows that Chinese trade, investment, and aid are important
influence conduits (e.g. Kastner 2016; Norris 2016; Dreher et al. 2018). Other scholars have
considered various other conditions under which China can influence developing countries
(e.g. Goh 2014; Lampton, Ho, and Kuik 2020).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 5

situates China’s twenty-first-century global infrastructure drive within China’s

broader global development finance program since 1949. It offers a general
definition of Chinese global infrastructure that can be applied to study a wide
range of China’s most economically and politically consequential infrastructure
projects in the Global South. In particular, it spotlights two primary forms of
global infrastructure that China has consistently financed and built: “high-
profile” infrastructure such as transportation and other large, economically
productive projects, and nationally symbolic “prestige” infrastructure such as
government buildings and stadiums.
Second, it operationalizes this definition and employs two newly created
datasets to directly measure Chinese global infrastructure projects committed
since 1949. One of these datasets was constructed over the past three years,
during which my research team catalogued approximately 4,000 total projects,
including nearly 1,500 physical infrastructure projects, that the Chinese gov-
ernment committed to developing countries during the second half of the
twentieth century. This comprehensive catalog of historical projects challenges
overwhelmingly present-focused accounts of Chinese global infrastructure.
Decades before the BRI was conceived, the Chinese government had already
begun financing and building global infrastructure at scale, including hundreds
of high-profile and prestige projects in over 100 countries across Africa, Asia,
and other developing regions.
Third, the Element helps clarify how global infrastructure generates different
intended and unintended influence outcomes that affect China’s interests.
Chinese global infrastructure is a valuable form of national political capital
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for host country leaders who can acquire and brand projects to serve a variety of
economic and political functions. But China’s overseas infrastructure projects
are no less immune to well-known pitfalls that have jeopardized other large-
scale infrastructure ventures throughout history. The same features that make
infrastructure attractive also tend to make its planners prone to risk miscalcula-
tion. In addition to economic risks, earlier Chinese global infrastructure and the
BRI have demonstrated that overseas infrastructure can also introduce major
volatility for states’ international influence, even when influence-seeking is not
the primary objective. These projects have unpredictable trajectories and have
likely complicated rather than enhanced China’s global influence, and have also
diminished the ability of the Chinese government to control its net influence
abroad. Overall, global infrastructure has been a useful tool for China’s pursuit
of high-level influence outcomes such as political support from foreign govern-
ments. But its returns for China’s popular influence and image abroad, as well as
China’s longer-term net influence, are considerably murkier.
 6 Global China

Important takeaways emerge from this contextual approach. Contemporary

Chinese global infrastructure is unique in terms of its currently unrivalled scale
throughout the Global South. The evidence presented below shows that China is
also rather distinct in terms of its consistent willingness to provide global
infrastructure since the Cold War. But historical and comparative perspectives
also reveal that contemporary Chinese global infrastructure projects are hardly
exceptional. Their political dynamics often resemble those of earlier Chinese-
financed global infrastructure, and of other large infrastructure ventures pursued
by governments and other stakeholders in a variety of settings.
Moreover, Chinese global infrastructure projects remain as much political
ventures as they are financial investments. Overlapping domestic and inter-
national political incentives between host country governments and China’s
government provide important rationale for both sides to pursue global infra-
structure. These visible, nationally relevant projects promise short-term polit-
ical benefits – including potential influence for China’s government – but also
generate major economic and political uncertainty for governments over time.
More careful appreciation for global infrastructure’s political dynamics com-
plements recent research heavily focused on the financing and debt aspects of
Chinese infrastructure lending. Chinese global infrastructure’s political logic is
crucial for understanding its long-term persistence in developing countries.
The remainder of the Element proceeds as follows. Section 2 provides
a primer on the evolution of China’s development finance from 1949 in order
to situate contemporary Chinese global infrastructure. It explains how China’s
government arrived at its current position as the world’s largest provider of
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global infrastructure, and how important policy foundations were laid down
during the second half of the twentieth century. It also synthesizes a large
literature on the nature, motives, and consequences of Chinese development
finance – including but not limited to infrastructure – that has emerged over the
past 20 years.
Section 3 turns specifically to Chinese overseas infrastructure development
projects. A sprawling, interdisciplinary literature suggests that these projects
generate important short-term economic benefits as well as longer-term risks.
I introduce the concept of “global infrastructure,” defined as government-
financed physical infrastructure projects which are both highly visible and
nationally salient in other countries. I focus on two prominent forms of
Chinese global infrastructure: “High-profile” projects are large-scale, complex
economic infrastructure projects, including massive transportation, energy, and
other productive infrastructures. “Prestige” projects are financially smaller but
equally visible and flashy infrastructure projects possessing national symbolism
such as government buildings, stadiums, and conference centers, and are
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 7

primarily allocated to small states in the Global South. Global infrastructure’s

visibility and national scope produces an outsized, conspicuous presence that
host country politicians amplify through their own branding efforts. These
features make global infrastructure distinct forms of political capital for both
host country governments and China’s government relative to other types of
development cooperation. Section 3 utilizes two new datasets to document
China’s provision of global infrastructure since 1949.
Section 4 turns to the relationship between infrastructure and influence. It
argues that global infrastructure possesses outsized scale, complexity, and
visibility that magnify both its political benefits for host country governments
and influence possibilities for donor and lender governments. In the short-term,
global infrastructure offers concrete political capital for both host country
leaders and for China’s government. The former can seek, acquire, and brand
high-profile or prestige infrastructure as national achievements that serve
a variety of domestic political purposes, while China’s government can provide
these projects to enhance its international influence. These features make global
infrastructure politically attractive for governments in the short term, but also
create complicated and poorly understood political consequences for China’s
government and host country governments as projects move from conception to
reality. In particular, global infrastructure activates unintended “influence exter-
nalities” for China via political mobilization and infrastructure narratives in
host countries that muddle the net political value of these projects and weaken
governments’ control over influence outcomes.
Section 5 summarizes and reflects on the Element’s main findings. It con-
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cludes that the BRI is an important chapter in a larger history of Chinese global
infrastructure and in a much larger, global story of states’ consistent attraction to
infrastructure despite massive socioeconomic and political risks. This broader
view helps grasp the roles of political in addition to economic considerations
that lead host countries and the Chinese government to jointly pursue global
infrastructure. It also suggests that global infrastructure is likely to remain as
a central component of China’s development cooperation even as it evolves into
digital and other new forms with different stakeholders and financial
arrangements.

2 The Lineage of Chinese Overseas Development Projects

How did China’s government become the world’s largest provider of infrastruc-
ture in developing countries? This section first provides a background of
China’s broader set of global development activities since 1949 to situate
Chinese global infrastructure. It reviews evidence on the motives and impacts
 8 Global China

of China’s global development projects and then discusses two new datasets that
can be used to document and analyze Chinese global infrastructure.

2.1 China’s Long March toward Global Infrastructure

Policymakers, journalists, and scholars have closely scrutinized the growing
overseas development programs of China and other “emerging donors” since
2000 (Woods 2008). But China is not a new donor or creditor. The People’s
Republic of China (PRC) initiated overseas development assistance almost
immediately after its founding in 1949. Since then, China’s basic posture toward
overseas development finance has shifted multiple times, often in response to
changing political and economic priorities at home. For example, China was
a net donor throughout most of the Mao era. Outgoing aid was an important
foreign policy tool driven heavily by political and ideological directives, par-
ticularly after the Sino-Soviet Split, when Mao adopted an extremely activist,
revolutionary foreign policy orientation (Yu 1977; Alden and Alves 2008;
Brazinsky 2017; Cheng and Taylor 2017; Eisenman 2018). This expansion
was significant: Even as hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens lived in
poverty, Chinese government spending on foreign aid accounted for over
5 percent of the national budget by the early 1970s (Dreher et al. 2022).
Chinese foreign aid was initially concentrated in nearby socialist states, but
during the 1960s China began providing aid to dozens of countries in Asia,
Africa, and other regions within the “Third World.”
Revolutionary aid was fiscally unsustainable, and China experienced a role
reversal and became a major net recipient of aid inflows during the reform and
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opening period. Its outgoing aid was scaled down and redirected toward smaller,
economically sustainable projects under Deng Xiaoping. China concurrently
began to receive high volumes of development finance, including many large-
scale infrastructure projects, from donors and lenders like Japan and the World
Bank. The Chinese government reengineered its development finance approach
once again during the 1990s – a process discussed more in the following
section – and returned to its status as a net provider of development finance
around 2005 (Kobayashi 2008; Chin 2012).9

9
Researchers often divide Chinese development finance into different periods based on these
shifts. For example, Lin (1993) divides it into four periods: 1953–1963, 1964–1971, 1972–1978,
and 1979–1989, whereas Kobayashi (2008) separates it into three: China as a net donor (1953–
1978), net recipient (1978–1995), and emerging donor (post-1995). Dreher and Fuchs (2015)
divide Chinese aid into five periods based on changing political and economic motives. Cheng
and Taylor (2017) see China’s aid to Africa as having four periods. Dreher et al. (2022) separate
China’s outward development finance into four periods largely reflective of China’s domestic
development situation.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 9

These shifts are important for understanding the origins of China’s contem-
porary global infrastructure drive. In particular, important policy changes dur-
ing the early reform era helped position China to dramatically scale up its
provision of overseas infrastructure. As China’s economy incrementally opened
up during the 1980s and 1990s, the Chinese government reoriented its outgoing
development finance to chiefly serve commercial in addition to political pur-
poses. This adjustment was informed by China’s own experience hosting
Japanese-financed infrastructure and other development projects. For example,
Japan’s government frequently utilized commodity-backed loans when finan-
cing infrastructure projects in China (Bräutigam 2009). It also adopted a project
allocation approach in which China’s government, often jointly with Japanese
enterprises, directly proposed specific infrastructure projects for Japan to
finance (Zhang and Smith 2017). Both of these features are now well-known
attributes associated with many contemporary Chinese-financed infrastructure
projects abroad.
Several specific policy changes also occurred during this period with conse-
quences for Chinese global infrastructure. In 1982, China’s Ministry of
Commerce, at the time called the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations
and Trade (对外经济贸易部), established the Department of Foreign Aid (援
助司) to manage overseas foreign assistance projects. Around the same time,
China National Complete Plant Import & Export Corporation Ltd.
(COMPLANT), which would eventually become a state-owned enterprise
(SOE), was mandated with implementing most of China’s overseas develop-
ment projects. China’s government also adopted a Contract Responsibility
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Mechanism (承包责任制) under which newly formed subsidiary enterprises

of central and provincial government institutions, which would also eventually
become SOEs, implemented Chinese-financed projects abroad (Cheng and
Taylor 2017, 39–42). The government also began to encourage the creation of
joint ventures between Chinese enterprises and foreign governments and firms,
in part to support overseas development projects. Finally, the Chinese govern-
ment started encouraging Chinese contractors to explore overseas markets as
early as the 1970s, and Chinese construction companies began to accumulate
experience as contractors for international infrastructure projects (Zhang 2020).
Commercialization of China’s development finance accelerated further in the
1990s with the establishment of China’s two primary “policy banks,” the
Export-Import Bank of China (“China Eximbank”) and China Development
Bank (“CDB”), which were created in part to take over underperforming
domestic projects in China (Sanderson and Forsythe 2013). After their forma-
tion, Eximbank and CDB also began serving as the major financial vehicles
through which China’s government provided capital for infrastructure projects
 10 Global China

around the world, particularly through concessional loans. Collectively, these

experiences, policy reforms, and new institutions provided the foundation for
China’s post-2000 global infrastructure drive.
The “Going Out” strategy launched by Jiang Zemin in the late 1990s and the
BRI launched fifteen years later drove and accelerated China’s global infra-
structure spree. Both initiatives explicitly linked several national economic
priorities with China’s overseas development finance and mobilized immense
state resources for financing and building infrastructure in developing coun-
tries. These objectives included finding alternative investment opportunities
to US treasury securities and managing excess foreign exchange reserves;
increasing foreign demand for Chinese goods and services, especially indus-
trial inputs produced in excess; creating globally competitive, national cham-
pion firms; enhancing China’s energy security; and attempting to wean
China’s own economy off of infrastructure investment (e.g. State Council
2013; Kong and Gallagher 2017; Ye 2020; Dreher et al. 2022). Relative to
other development projects, infrastructure is particularly useful for pursuing
many of these objectives as it offers massive financial and construction scale
for allocating capital and supporting Chinese companies who serve as
contractors.
The net result of these developments was that, by the early 2000s, China’s
government was no longer a “traditional” donor who provided most of its
overseas development capital as concessional aid. Instead, it had transformed
into a massive provider of infrastructure primarily financed by loans motivated
just as much by commercial considerations as political goals (Dreher et al.
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2022). China still remained an important aid donor during this transformation,
and its provision of smaller, highly concessional foreign aid projects in agricul-
ture, education, health, and various social sectors has also increased signifi-
cantly since the 1980s and after 2000. But these projects now represent
a shrinking share of China’s overall global development footprint. China has
taken on a hybrid role as a major source of both development aid and commer-
cial infrastructure lending, though the latter is increasingly dominant as a share
of China’s overall development finance. For example, between 2000 and 2007
China committed 61 cents of aid for every dollar of lending committed (Dreher
et al. 2022, 105). In contrast, from 2013 to 2017, it committed just 11 cents of
aid for each dollar of lending (Malik et al. 2021).
This evolution has arguably made it more difficult for the Chinese govern-
ment to consolidate its development finance program – an already strenuous
task given a wide range of stakeholders – by further increasing the number of
relevant political and commercial actors. The Ministry of Commerce
(MOFCOM) has long been the primary actor in managing China’s overseas
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 11

development projects, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) as well as

several domain-specific ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture and
Ministry of Health, have also long been involved with implementing Chinese-
financed aid projects.
China’s infrastructure-heavy development finance approach since 2000 sig-
nificantly increased the pool of financial and policy stakeholders. These include,
to name a few, sovereign funds that finance Chinese banks, China Eximbank
and China Development Bank, China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation
(Sinosure), other commercial banks involved with lending for Chinese-financed
projects, Economic and Commercial Counselor Offices (ECCOs) (经济商务参
赞处) attached to Chinese embassies abroad, and SOEs implementing projects
on the ground in other countries. These actors play important roles across
project financing and implementation (e.g. Gill and Reilly 2007; Corkin 2011).
Chinese SOEs serving as contractors and in other roles have become espe-
cially important infrastructure actors on the ground. They possess the expertise
needed to build large-scale infrastructure projects in diverse foreign environ-
ments and, even as Chinese labor costs have increased, they can often do so at
significantly lower costs than contractors from “traditional” donor and creditor
countries (Huang and Chen 2016). State-owned enterprises are not passive
actors who simply implement state directives, and available evidence shows
that they can affect and interact with Chinese development finance in multiple
ways. One study based on elite interviews with Chinese officials finds that
Chinese SOEs and politicians in host countries can coordinate to secure infra-
structure loans backed by Chinese policy banks, which impacts both the
national and subnational allocation of projects (Zhang and Smith 2017).10
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Moreover, in recent years Chinese SOEs have expanded from their traditional
roles as contractors responsible for engineering, procurement, and construction.
They are increasingly playing more active roles in overseas infrastructure
projects often involving more equity and risk. They are doing so through
build-operate-transfer (BOT) and other forms of public-private partnerships,
as well as emerging forms of stakeholder-ship such as “integrated investment,
construction, and operation” (Leutert 2019; Zhang 2023).
Actor proliferation has likely made bureaucratic coordination more difficult.
In 2018, China’s government created the China International Development
Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) to serve as an independent aid agency under
the State Council and improve coordination (Rudyak 2019a). But CIDCA’s
vice-ministerial rank may circumscribe its relative authority, and thus far it

10
This process is partially enabled by inadequate staffing across China’s development finance
bureaucracy (Zhang and Smith 2017).
 12 Global China

remains unclear whether and the extent to which CIDCA or other new institu-
tions can help streamline China’s development finance bureaucracy. It remains
to be seen whether these bureaucratic and commercial actors can coordinate
effectively and minimize informational and operational inefficiencies, espe-
cially when implementing large, complex infrastructure projects (Zhao and
Jing 2019). As discussed in Section 4, actor diversity also presents challenges
for China’s government in trying to leverage global infrastructure for its pursuit
of international influence.
In summary, Chinese development finance has undergone multiple shifts
over the past seven decades. China’s shift from an aid donor to a hybrid, global
provider of both aid and less concessional developmental capital reflects grow-
ing importance of economic motivations in addition to longstanding political
motives. This evolution introduced a plethora of new state and commercial
actors into China’s development finance arena, and also paved the way for
China’s contemporary global infrastructure drive. As Section 3 demonstrates,
however, overseas infrastructure has a long lineage that has survived diverse
periods of Chinese development finance.

2.2 What Do We Know about Contemporary Chinese Global

Development Projects?
China’s reemergence as a major donor and lender since 2000 has sprouted a
large literature focused on the nature and consequences of China’s global
development projects, including but not limited to infrastructure. This section
summarizes evidence on the allocation and impacts of these projects.
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2.2.1 Where Does China Finance Development Projects?

China’s government publishes considerably less detailed information on its over-

seas development projects compared to other major donors and lenders. Without
systematic official data, researchers initially struggled to accurately categorize and
measure China’s global development projects. Earlier studies tended to aggregate
all of China’s state-financed capital in developing countries into catch-all measures
such as “aid.”11 But only a portion of China’s international development projects
resemble aid projects based on definitions set by multilateral bodies such as the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development
Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) (Bräutigam 2011).
Differentiating between Chinese aid- and debt-financed projects is thus
crucial. As Dreher et al. (2018) show, Chinese aid and debt have fundamentally

11
See Strange et al. (2013) for a summary of these studies.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 13

different features and motives, so it makes little sense to lump them together. In
terms of aid (i.e. “official development assistance,” or “ODA,” as defined by the
OECD-DAC), in recent years China’s government has provided several billion
dollars globally each year and would rank within the top ten bilateral donors
worldwide. It thus has remained a major and important source of foreign aid.
But China’s debt-based development finance (i.e. “other official flows,” or
“OOF”), which is usually much less concessional than aid and primarily
provided via China Eximbank and CDB loans closer to prevailing market
rates, far outpaces lending from any other bilateral lender.
As China’s development finance grew throughout the early 2000s, inter-
national observers primarily located in Western democratic countries became
anxious. They worried that Beijing would be a “rogue donor” that deployed aid
to strengthen corrupt dictators, extract natural resources, and undermine aid
from “traditional” donors and creditors rather than help communities most in
need of assistance (Naim 2007). Available evidence suggests that these accusa-
tions have largely not materialized (Dreher and Fuchs 2015). Instead, China’s
foreign aid is heavily concentrated in less developed, poorer countries with high
levels of economic need (Dreher et al. 2022).
The Chinese government does employ aid to pursue strategic foreign policy
objectives such as securing international diplomatic recognition and political
support. Since the 1950s it has used aid as a carrot to cement its international
diplomatic recognition and isolate Taiwan, a dynamic examined more in
Section 4 (Kao 1988). For example, the prospect of economic assistance from
China was an important factor in shaping Chad’s decision to abandon (for
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the second time) diplomatic support for Taiwan in favor of the PRC in 2006
(Cheng and Shi 2009). A more recent example is the government of Nicaragua,
who severed official ties with Taiwan in December 2021. Shortly after, the
government inked several agreements for economic assistance from China,
including a 12,000-unit social housing scheme as well as provisional agree-
ments for other infrastructure including ports, railways, energy, and water
projects.12
Employing aid for geopolitical interests makes China similar to, rather than
different from, “traditional” donors and creditors in the OECD-DAC. For
example, political economists have shown repeatedly that donor governments
funnel more bilateral aid to governments serving on the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) to sway policy decisions there (e.g. Kuziemko and Werker
2006), and can also steer multilateral development finance to temporary UNSC

12
www.globalconstructionreview.com/china-funds-major-social-housing-scheme-in-nicaragua/.
 14 Global China

members or other strategically important recipient countries (e.g. Dreher,

Sturm, and Vreeland 2009).
On the other hand, Chinese aid often differs from aid provided by other major
donors and lenders in at least one important way. China’s “no strings attached”
approach often allows host country politicians to steer the selection, location,
and branding of aid projects to a greater degree than projects financed by other
large donors and lenders. As a result, Chinese aid can become a form of
“unearned income” that host country leaders strategically manipulate and allo-
cate to politically salient areas, especially during important political periods
(Smith 2008). Dreher et al. (2019) find that Chinese-financed aid projects are
heavily concentrated in the birth regions of African leaders, particularly in the
lead-up to competitive elections. Unfortunately, this means that projects some-
times do not end up in places with strong socioeconomic need, as leader birth
regions tend to be located in wealthier regions (Hodler and Raschky 2014). In
contrast, neither debt-financed projects from China nor development projects
financed by the World Bank exhibit this tendency. These null findings make
sense: The World Bank is known for conducting extensive pre-project evalu-
ations and screenings to guard against political capture, while China is not
known for employing rigorous safeguards (Independent Evaluation Group
2010; Dornan and Brant 2014; Dreher et al. 2022).
Chinese debt financing follows a different allocative logic. The Chinese
government’s approach to financing overseas infrastructure and other capital
follows an “encompassing accumulation” logic aimed at both commercial and
political objectives (Lee 2017). Commercial calculations in particular have
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become increasingly important since 2000, and as mentioned earlier, several

national economic objectives have driven Chinese development lending for the
past two decades. Allocation of Chinese debt-financed projects reflects these
priorities. Dreher et al. (2022) show that Chinese development projects financed
with debt are most frequently located in large, stable economies that offer
greater potential for large returns on investment and lower likelihood of default.
Another recent study supports this intuition and suggests that Chinese-financed
electrification projects increasingly are allocated to wealthier countries with
lower investment risks and higher ex ante electrification rates (Sauer et al.
2022). However, debt-based finance – much of which supports large-scale
infrastructure projects – also flows heavily into countries with higher levels of
corruption and lower levels of democracy. This is perhaps because such an
institutional environment – which often features less bureaucratic red tape,
regulation, and public oversight – makes it easier for China’s policy banks
and companies to do business with their host country counterparts.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 15

2.2.2 What Are the Impacts for Host Countries and Societies?
A related research agenda examines how Chinese-financed development pro-
jects affect the societies and economies in which they are implemented. On
balance, Chinese development projects appear to create important economic
benefits in the short run, but also introduce several different types of risks for
host countries.
Despite skepticism by other major donors and creditors, China’s global
infrastructure push has been a welcome sight for many developing countries.
Host countries throughout Asia, Africa, and beyond have enormous infrastruc-
ture gaps, and most bilateral and multilateral donors and creditors stopped
financing infrastructure at scale decades ago. One estimate suggests that
US$3.3 trillion in infrastructure investment is required globally through 2030,
which equates to over US$350 billion more than current annual levels, in order
to maintain current economic development forecasts (McKinsey Global
Institute 2016).13 Proponents of China’s approach thus often point out that
Beijing is financing urgently needed “hardware” otherwise unavailable to
many developing countries (Moyo 2009; Lin and Wang 2017). Evidence sug-
gests that Chinese infrastructure is indeed helping fill this massive gap. Chinese
development projects – both those financed through aid and especially those
financed with debt – improve socioeconomic development in the short term as
projects are built and come online. Dreher et al. (2021) find robust evidence that
Chinese projects increase economic growth and activity both nationally and
locally. In the short run, they find that an additional development project boosts
economic growth on average between .41 and 1.49 percentage points two years
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after project commitment. At the same time, there is little or no evidence that
Chinese development projects undercut potential development gains produced
by Western donors and lenders – another claim of the aforementioned “rogue
donor” narrative.
Over longer periods of time, however, the net benefits of China’s global
infrastructure and other development projects are less clear. Short-term eco-
nomic boosts created by Chinese projects occur alongside complex economic,
political, environmental, social, and other challenges introduced by the same
projects. Grasping the medium- and long-term net economic effects of devel-
opment projects, including those financed and built by Chinese actors, is a much
more difficult task.
The issue of debt sustainability offers an illustration of this complexity. On
the one hand, scholars have repeatedly challenged the well-known but highly

13
The global infrastructure gap is a major impetus for larger efforts to mobilize trillions of dollars
to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (Independent Group of Scientists 2019).
 16 Global China

controversial “Debt Trap Diplomacy” narrative insinuating that China’s gov-

ernment has been strategically luring borrower countries into its economic and
political orbit by saddling them with unsustainable infrastructure debts (e.g.
Bräutigam 2020; Bräutigam 2022). Careful analysis of several flagship BRI
projects finds little evidence of debt trap motives.
On the other hand, debt-financed infrastructure by definition requires sub-
stantial borrowing by host country governments. One earlier study found that
eight countries may face high risks of debt distress because of their planned
pipelines of BRI infrastructure projects, and this was calculated before many
developing countries’ balance sheets significantly worsened following the
outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hurley, Morris, and Portelance 2019).
Another study suggests that debt challenges from Chinese-financed infrastruc-
ture are due to both scope – i.e. the sheer volume and scale of Chinese-financed
infrastructure around the world – as well as the lack of transparency on the part
of China’s government and policy banks, and the requirements in some loan
contracts for borrower countries to keep loan terms shielded from public view
(Gelpern et al. 2022). A more recent analysis suggests that in recent years
China’s government has used US$240 billion – primarily in the form of
People’s Bank of China’s (PBOC) currency swaps in Renminbi and additional
loans – in bailing out debt-distressed host governments, many of whom initially
pursued BRI infrastructure projects (Horn et al. 2023).
In addition to debt sustainability issues, measuring the net, long-term impacts
of Chinese development projects on various socioeconomic outcomes is con-
siderably more complicated than studying short-term indicators. It will none-
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theless be an important task for researchers in the coming years as many BRI
projects currently under implementation become operational.
China’s overseas development projects produce a wide range of other conse-
quences in addition to socioeconomic impacts. To name but a few, Chinese-
financed aid and debt projects can help reduce conflict in African countries
when they fill voids created from aid withdrawals by “traditional” providers of
development finance (Strange et al. 2017). At the same time, debt-financed
projects might instead fuel conflict by expanding the reach of the state or
creating local grievances (Dreher et al. 2022). Large infrastructure projects in
particular can also create negative environmental externalities. This has long
been a source of concern for environmental advocates who worry that infra-
structure projects can harm the natural environment – via air pollution, defor-
estation, water and sewage contamination, and other channels – if these risks are
not internalized by project implementers. Many planned transportation cor-
ridors along the BRI fall on or near fragile ecosystems and important biodiver-
sity areas across Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 17

(Hughes 2019; Yang et al. 2021). Commercially driven, debt-financed projects

provided by China are not known to be subject to internal vetting processes that
adequately internalize these environmental risks and put in place corresponding
standards. One study finds that Chinese-financed projects accelerate deforest-
ation but that this effect is most severe in countries with poor environmental
regulations and law enforcement, while negative effects can be minimized in
more stringent regulatory environments (BenYishay et al. 2016). Another study
points out that energy projects financed by Chinese policy banks, particularly
coal-fired power plants financed before President Xi Jinping’s 2021 pledge to
stop building them, use enormous amounts of water and raise important ques-
tions about water security and sustainability (Alkon et al. 2019).

2.3 New Evidence on China’s Global Development Projects

since 1949
Until about a decade ago, little systematic evidence existed for studying China’s
evolving overseas development portfolio. As noted earlier, the Chinese govern-
ment is less forthcoming than other major donor and creditor governments in terms
of providing detailed information on its overseas development activities. Several
open-source research initiatives have recently emerged to help fill this informa-
tional gap. These efforts have made it possible for researchers to more holistically
and objectively study China’s global development finance using both quantitative
and qualitative methods. Research organizations like AidData at William and Mary
and a joint project between Boston University and Johns Hopkins University have
produced and published large datasets on China’s global development finance. In
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subsequent sections, this Element employs two recently published datasets to study
China’s provision of infrastructure projects since 1949.14
The first dataset is AidData’s Chinese Official Finance Dataset, Version 2.0
(Custer et al. 2021; Dreher et al. 2022). This dataset was constructed and
refined over the past twelve years in collaboration with an interdisciplinary
team of scholars as well as hundreds of staff and students, primarily at William
and Mary in the United States. The data are collected and refined using
a publicly documented method called Tracking Underreported Financial
Flows (TUFF) (Custer et al. 2023). Social scientists routinely use this data-
base to analyze the aims and effects of China’s overseas development projects
on a variety of outcomes. The 2.0 version of the dataset includes over 13,000
project records of Chinese government commitments of overseas develop-
ment finance between 2000 and 2017, and the recently-released 3.0 version
extends data coverage through 2021.

14
Data presented in this Element are subject to periodic update as underlying datasets are updated.
 18 Global China

The second dataset is China’s 20th-Century Global Development Projects, a new

dataset I also developed along with a research team based at the University of
Hong Kong. It includes all publicly known Chinese government-financed develop-
ment projects worldwide committed between 1949 and 1999. Over the past three
years, our research team developed and applied a data collection methodology that
builds on the general principles of TUFF and makes particularly heavy use of
historical Chinese government publications – including bilateral agreements, vari-
ous other government documents, and Party-state-controlled newspapers – to track
China’s twentieth-century overseas development projects.
The dataset also benefits from and builds on earlier attempts to track twenti-
eth-century Chinese global development activities (e.g. Horvath 1976; Law
1984; Bartke 1989; Lin 1993; Morgan and Zheng 2019).15 Each of these efforts
relied on a combination of official and unofficial sources to track Chinese-
financed development projects in Africa and beyond. These earlier studies
provide valuable evidence on China’s evolving role in financing global devel-
opment, but none of them produced a comprehensive accounting of Chinese
development finance before 2000, whether in terms of the overall sample of
projects or in terms of the specific details and sources for each project. The new
dataset thus helps fill a longstanding gap in the literature.
The twentieth-century data also complement other recent initiatives that track
contemporary China’s overseas development finance – such as AidData as well
as the Chinese Loans to Africa (CLA) Database – by enabling researchers to
examine Chinese development projects since 1949 to the present day.16 The
historical dataset includes nearly 4,000 Chinese-financed development project
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commitments between 1949 and 1999 to over 130 countries.

Finally, these data are also valuable for studying Chinese global infrastructure
projects, the focus of the remainder this Element. They help make three contribu-
tions in the proceeding sections. First, as mentioned in Section 1, the outpouring
of policy and academic analysis on Chinese infrastructure suffers from recency
bias and rarely offers historical context for the BRI. The historical data are
compatible with contemporary datasets and, as shown in the following, enable
analysis of Chinese overseas infrastructure projects over a long time horizon.

15
Bartke (1989) used Chinese newspapers and other sources to construct a dataset of Chinese
global development projects between 1956 and 1987. Both the OECD (1978) and Lin (1993)
built on and extended this work, and the CIA (1982) also tracked various Chinese loans and
grants provided to developing countries throughout the Cold War. More recently, Hawkins et al.
(2010) produced project-level data on Chinese aid projects between 1990 and 2005 using
MOFCOM yearbooks, and Morgan and Zheng (2019) used an approach adapted from TUFF
to track pre-2000 projects in Africa.
16
The dataset is compatible with data on contemporary Chinese-financed development projects
gathered using AidData’s TUFF methodology.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 19

Second, in documenting China’s twentieth-century development projects,

our research team directly coded all of China’s publicly known infrastructure
projects. This is a departure from previous approaches that typically document
Chinese development finance projects at the transaction- rather than project-
level. The approach herein is novel because, despite a wide consensus that
infrastructure is central to China’s development cooperation, available datasets
and research tend to measure and analyze infrastructure indirectly. As pointed
out in Section 1, most quantitative research that makes use of public datasets
employs proxies for infrastructure projects, such as dollars committed to infra-
structure-intensive sectors or certain types of financing instruments, rather than
analyzing actual infrastructure projects. In contrast, in building the dataset of
historical Chinese development projects, we carefully coded every individual
project for several infrastructure-related variables. Crucially, our research team
also applied this infrastructure coding protocol to AidData’s Chinese Official
Finance Dataset, Version 2.0.17 The data featured in the following section make
use of this approach.
Third, and relatedly, measuring infrastructure requires a definition. Whereas
earlier research often refers to Chinese overseas infrastructure in broad or vague
terms, in the following section I first explicitly define different kinds of Chinese
global infrastructure and then operationalize the definitions to catalog Chinese
projects since 1949 using the aforementioned datasets.

3 Chinese Global Infrastructure: High-Profile and Prestige

Projects
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As discussed in the previous section, most existing research focuses on Chinese

development finance generally rather than infrastructure specifically. This sec-
tion first contextualizes popular debates on Chinese overseas infrastructure. It
considers Chinese and general perspectives on infrastructure, then introduces
a new definition – covering both “high-profile” and “prestige” projects – and
applies it to empirically catalog China’s global infrastructure since 1949.

3.1 Chinese and International Perspectives

China’s overseas infrastructure is loosely defined concept without clear bound-
aries. Most analysts are plausibly referring to large, physical development
projects with one or more tangible sites. Roads, railways, airports, harbors
and ports, office buildings, housing complexes, power plants, factories,
mines, industrial zones, government facilities, stadiums, and entertainment

17
The 3.0 version includes a general binary marker for infrastructure, whereas I use a more specific
measure of global infrastructure discussed below.
 20 Global China

and meeting venues are among the most common types of Chinese infrastruc-
ture development projects. In addition, Chinese overseas infrastructure includes
a growing portfolio of “digital infrastructure” such as wireless networks, artifi-
cial intelligence, smart cities and digital surveillance technologies, nanotech-
nology, and quantum computing projects (Xinhua 2017).
In conceptualizing Chinese global infrastructure, Chinese official and quasi-
official interpretations are a natural starting point. The term “infrastructure” (基
础设施), and related terms such as “infrastructure construction” (基础建设),
began regularly appearing in Party-state-controlled newspapers in the 1980s.
For example, across People’s Daily (人民日报) articles published between
1950 and 2022, “infrastructure” appears regularly in the early 1980s and
became a frequently mentioned topic thereafter. Much of the discussion, how-
ever, pertained to domestic infrastructure construction in China. Since then, as
shown in Table 1, China’s official conceptualization of infrastructure has
gradually evolved over the past three decades. Infrastructure initially referred
to physical projects seen as prerequisite foundations for economic development.
Subsequent definitions continue to suggest that infrastructure is vital for socio-
economic development, and that it plays a “foundational, leading, and all-
encompassing” (基础性、先导性、全局性) role. More recent interpretations
highlight transportation and digital fields in particular, differentiating them as
“traditional” and “new” infrastructure.
Chinese discussions of infrastructure built outside of China have often
concentrated on three themes: the importance of “connectivity,” the application
of China’s domestic infrastructure experience to the international realm, and, to
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a lesser extent, China’s international influence. First, Chinese government

speeches and documents, particularly those published since the launch of the
BRI, emphasize the socioeconomic value of infrastructure connectivity. For
instance, at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017, Xi Jinping remarked:

Infrastructure connectivity is the foundation of development through cooper-

ation. We should promote land, maritime, air and cyberspace connectivity,
concentrate our efforts on key passageways, cities and projects and connect
networks of highways, railways and sea ports . . . . We need to seize oppor-
tunities presented by the new round of change in energy mix and the revolu-
tion in energy technologies to develop global energy interconnection and
achieve green and low-carbon development. We should improve trans-
regional logistics network and promote connectivity of policies, rules and
standards so as to provide institutional safeguards for enhancing connectivity.
(Xinhua 2017).

The Chinese government has continuously doubled down on this sentiment. At

the third symposium on Belt and Road development in 2021, Xi emphasized
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 21

Table 1 Selected references to infrastructure in People’s Daily, 1949–2022

Infrastructure in Chinese
Date text Translation
11/09/1990 基础设施一般指能源、交 Infrastructure generally refers
通、邮电、江河流域治 to basic facilities such as
理、农田水利建设、环境 energy, transportation, post
保护以及供热、供水、供 and telecommunications,
气等基本设施, 它是社会 river basin management,
经济发展的基本物质条 agricultural irrigation and
件。 water conservancy,
environmental protection,
as well as heat, water and
gas supply, which are the
essential material
conditions for social and
economic development.
01/16/2017 基础设施互联互通是“一带 Infrastructure is a priority area
一路”建设的优先领域 . . . of the “Belt and Road”
基础设施 (包括高速公 initiative. Infrastructure
路、大桥、高铁、港口、 (including highways,
电厂、通讯设施等)。基 bridges, high-speed
础设施对经济社会发展具 railways, ports, power
有基础性、先导性、全局 plants, communication
性作用。 facilities, etc.).
Infrastructure plays
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a fundamental, pioneering,
and an all-encompassing
role in economic and social
development.
06/08/2020 传统基础设施建设主要指 Traditional infrastructure
‘铁公机’, 包括铁路、公 construction mainly refers
路、机场、港口、水利设 to “RHA,” including
施等建设项目, 在我国经 construction projects such
济发展过程中具有重要的 as railways, highways,
基础作用。新基建则主要 airports, ports, and water
指以 5 G、数据中心、人 conservancy facilities,
工智能、工业互联网、物 which have a fundamental
联网为代表的新型基础设 role in China’s economic
施, 本质上是信息数字化 development. New
的基础设施。 infrastructure construction,
 22 Global China

Table 1 (cont.)

Infrastructure in Chinese
Date text Translation

on the other hand, mainly

refers to 5G technology,
data centers, AI, the
industrial internet, and
internet of things (IoT),
which is essentially
digitalized infrastructure.

that infrastructure is important for building “hard connectivity” (硬联通) along

the BRI (Xi 2021).18 The State Council’s 2021 white paper on “International
Development Cooperation in the New Era” also emphasized the role of infra-
structure connectivity (State Council 2021). The National Development and
Reform Commission (NDRC)’s Belt and Road Construction Promotion Center
(国家发展改革委一带一路建设促进中心) added in January 2022 that infra-
structure connectivity is a key priority of the BRI (People’s Daily 2022).
Chinese economists have argued that spatial connectivity created through
overseas infrastructure generates economic value because it relieves bottle-
necks such as unemployment and productivity, whereas Western bilateral and
multilateral financiers’ emphasis on social development lacks connectivity
elements and has thus failed to provide these benefits (e.g. Lin and Wang
2017). In short, from the perspective of China’s government and other obser-
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vers, global infrastructure is a defining feature of Chinese international devel-

opment cooperation, and one of its key functions is to promote “connectivity.”
Another perspective is that overseas infrastructure projects are an outward
reflection of China’s own approach to promoting development at home. Both
Chinese and international scholars have interpreted China’s global infrastructure
drive as the “internationalization of a development-finance model that has facili-
tated its own growth in the past decades” (Yeh and Wharton 2016; Chen 2020a,
437). This approach emphasizes economic “hardware” such as transportation
infrastructure, for which China’s government plays a central role in financing and
projects and increasing their creditworthiness. Observers inside and outside of
China point to large-scale infrastructure as China’s clear comparative advantage
over other donors and creditors that stems from its own development approach

18
He also remarked that this connectivity should “deepen traditional infrastructure project cooper-
ation and advance new forms of infrastructure project cooperation” (深化传统基础设施项目合
作, 推进新型基础设施项目合作).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 23

(Wang 2017; Wahba 2021). Over the past three decades, local, provincial, and
national government actors invested hundreds of billions of dollars in upgrading
China’s transportation infrastructure. China’s government began overhauling and
expanding the highway system in the early 1990s, which spread out economic
activity from large cities into surrounding areas and had potentially large, positive
effects on average incomes (Roberts et al. 2012; Baum-Snow et al. 2017).
Similarly, between 2004 and 2019, China built over 35,000 kilometers (km) of
high-speed rail operating at a speed of at least 250 km/hour (Ma 2022, 2).19 Beyond
transportation projects, Chinese government agencies and state-owned enterprises
at various administrative levels have also invested heavily in other large, physical
infrastructures such as office buildings, malls, stadiums, performing arts centers,
and event venues, to name but a few.20
A third perspective held by some within and outside of China parallels
international debates discussed in Section 1: The potential for overseas infrastruc-
ture to enhance China’s global influence. Even before the launch of the BRI,
Chinese leaders purportedly believed that international infrastructure would
increase China’s global influence and advance its foreign policy interests. As
Ye (2020, 177) points out, the idea of “infrastructure diplomacy” dates at least to
2008 when a blueprint for a “Chinese Marshall Plan” was laid out. Earlier
generations of Chinese leaders also saw merit in deploying high-visibility infra-
structure projects to pursue influence across Asia and Africa. One of China’s most
famous aid projects, the Tanzania–Zambia Railway (TAZARA, 坦赞铁路), was
endorsed by Premier Zhou Enlai, who believed the project would generate
substantially greater influence than would using the money to instead build
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small and medium-sized projects in other countries (Editorial Board 2008, 322;
Monson 2021). Though TAZARA – and many other major Chinese infrastructure
projects discussed in the following sections – was also heavily motivated by other
economic and political objectives, the Chinese government perceived the project
as an important conduit for pursuing international influence.

3.2 Infrastructure Promises and Pitfalls: Comparative Context

Beyond Chinese perspectives, earlier research and debates in other settings pro-
vides additional context for China’s overseas infrastructure drive. For example,
a large literature in economics suggests that government spending on infrastructure

19
China’s enormous domestic investments in high-speed rail and other transportation projects were
subject to intense policy debate, and there is persistent uncertainty regarding their long-term
profitability (e.g. Ma 2011; Ansar et al. 2016; Pettis 2022).
20
The hosting of international events – also an impetus for host countries requesting Chinese
infrastructure financing, as discussed below – often legitimized proposals for these projects in
China (Ren 2017, 148).
 24 Global China

generally has positive effects on economic productivity growth (e.g. Aschauer

1998; Sanchez-Robles 1998; Roller and Waverman 2001; Esfahani and Ramirez
2003). Infrastructure can generate short-run economic boosts by stimulating invest-
ment and employment, and can also produce long-term productivity increases as
projects become active and begin to reshape economic activity (Leduc and Wilson
2013).21 Big infrastructure projects in particular directly create new employment
opportunities (e.g. Ali and Pernia 2003; Gibbons et al. 2019) which can be
politically valuable to governments. On balance, existing research suggests infra-
structure promotes economic growth, though there is less consensus over the
precise channels and timing over which this occurs (Calderón and Servén 2014).
International development actors have applied this economic rationale to prescribe
infrastructure investment in developing countries, and international institutions
such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) consistently
emphasize the need for global infrastructure investment (e.g. World Bank 1994).
In terms of economic potential, at first glance China’s global infrastructure
push should thus be a welcome sight. Developing countries throughout the
Global South have enormous infrastructure gaps, and Chinese-supported infra-
structure promises to help address them. Available evidence, including that
discussed in the previous section, generally supports the notion that Chinese-
financed infrastructure stimulates economic activity in these countries. Dreher
et al. (2022) find that Chinese debt-financed projects – including many big-
ticket infrastructure projects – improve socioeconomic outcomes in the short
run in host countries at national and local levels. These projects increase
economic output, decrease child mortality, and reduce spatial inequality by
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alleviating bottlenecks. Transportation infrastructure projects in particular can

lower the cost of commuting to and from cities and increase property values in
suburban and rural communities in developing countries (Bluhm et al. 2021).
Other recent studies report similar findings of positive, short-term economic
impacts of Chinese infrastructure (e.g. De Soyres, Mulabdic, and Ruta 2020;
Mueller 2022). There is also evidence that Chinese infrastructure projects
abroad can increase local employment by stimulating short-term demand for
low-skilled labor and longer-term demand for skilled labor after projects are
finished, in countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, and Uganda (Warmerdam and
van Dijk 2013; Guo and Jiang 2021; Oya and Schaefer 2023). Chinese-financed
projects that mitigate infrastructure bottlenecks may also help local firms

21
It can also affect inequality directly and indirectly by providing new economic opportunities and
increasing the value of assets owned by less wealthy members of the population. Transportation
infrastructure can increase the productivity of transport-reliant sectors, lower commute costs,
and unlock economic opportunities for communities and households (Fernald 1999; Donaldson
2018).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 25

become more productive, particularly those lacking access to quality transpor-

tation options (Marchesi, Masi, and Paul 2021).
Over the longer term, evidence from other contexts is less conclusive about
whether large infrastructure drives sustainable growth in developing countries
(e.g. Warner, Berg, and Pattillo 2014). Assessing the economic impacts of
large infrastructure projects is difficult because of their scale, long implemen-
tation time, and financial and operational complexity (Leduc and Wilson
2013). On the one hand, these projects usually possess outsized economic
ambitions that are not captured by short-term changes. Big infrastructure is
not merely about direct, short-term results, and often hinges on grander
visions of reshaping socioeconomic activity within or across communities of
various scales. For example, city and other administrative governments in the
United States undertook large public infrastructure projects at an unprece-
dented scale in the 1950s and 1960s, as a strategy aimed at revitalizing urban
centers by attracting private and commercial investment (Altshuler and
Luberoff 2003).
While transformational ambitions make large-scale infrastructure appealing,
they also inject major economic risks for project and community stakeholders.
Even if infrastructure projects increase aggregate welfare, they also often create
highly uneven distributional consequences (e.g. Duflo and Pande 2007). Other
studies question the basic economic viability of large infrastructure. Scholars of
“megaprojects,” often defined as multibillion dollar transformational projects,
have studied this phenomenon extensively. In their global study, Flyvbjerg et al.
(2003; 2017, 12) suggest that these projects follow “iron laws”: the majority are
consistently “over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.”
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Drawing on evidence from several hundred projects, they find that megaprojects
are highly prone to economic underperformance across different political and
geographic environments. Another study examines over 300 industrial mega-
projects and similarly finds that over 65 percent “failed to meet business
objectives” (Merrow 2011, vii). “Megastructures,” or “massive construction
or structure[s], especially a complex of many buildings,” have also historically
yielded subpar economic and publicity results given their enormous scale, cost,
and lengthy time horizons (Banham 2020, 16). These tendencies are no less
likely in developing countries, where infrastructure has always tended to take
longer than expected to implement (Calderón and Servén 2014; Estache and Fay
2007).22

22
Many other projects are simply never finished. For instance, one study examines over 14,000
small infrastructure projects in Ghana and finds that one-third are never completed (Williams
2017).
 26 Global China

Other researchers have similarly documented how government investments

in infrastructure and other large-scale interventions often disappoint. Scott
(1998, 5) shows how high-modernist ideologies that became prevalent during
the second half of the eighteenth century convinced governments to attempt to
reorder societies around infrastructural interventions such as “huge dams,
centralized communication and transportation hubs, large factories and farms,
and grid cities.” Developing countries, many of which were still colonies at the
time, were often experimental sites for these interventions as colonial govern-
ments sponsored infrastructure projects that envisioned socioeconomic trans-
formation and justified repression (Lorenzini 2019, 13–14).
When governments become captivated by infrastructure visions and prom-
ises, they also can struggle to identify and select socially optimal projects. As
Anand, Gupta, and Appel (2018, 19) explain, “Shiny new airports with huge
capacities are built in many countries although they only serve a tiny elite,
whereas less glamorous infrastructures, which would actually be more useful to
the poorer segments of the population, are ignored and overlooked.”
Alternatively, even if governments are relatively clear-eyed regarding infra-
structure investment costs and benefits, political incentives can lead them to
investment large sums in socioeconomically wasteful infrastructure (e.g.
Robinson and Torvik 2005).
Several other factors can further help explain large-scale infrastructure’s
fraught economic performance. Proponents of major infrastructure are prone
to tendencies and biases that can jeopardize objective calculation. Political
leaders may desire the “rapture” from “building monuments to themselves”
and from the “visibility this generates with the public and media,” while project
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architects, planners, and consumers may derive “pleasure” from “building and
using something very large that is also iconic and beautiful” (Flyvbjerg
2017, 6). These and other individual-level “sublimes” can lead project sup-
porters to neglect thorough cost-benefit analyses and subvert potential oppos-
ition voices that would otherwise serve as accountability mechanisms.
Flyvbjerg et al. (2003, 5) note that even in democratic contexts, project advo-
cates often shun “established practices of good governance, transparency and
participation in political and administrative decision making.” The sheer finan-
cial and operational scale and complexity of large infrastructure further make it
vulnerable to a suite of challenges, including corruption, public-private coord-
ination bottlenecks, lack of flexibility, and bias toward linear thinking.
Existing research suggests that China’s overseas infrastructure projects display
many of these basic features. Chinese government-financed projects are similarly
large, complex, and have long time horizons that complicate cost-benefit analysis.
For example, Kaplan (2021) describes Chinese overseas development loans for
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 27

infrastructure as “patient capital” with long time horizons, high risk tolerance, and
low conditionality relative to capital from other foreign creditors. Other scholars
have similarly noted that “the costs and benefits of large-scale infrastructure
construction cannot be conclusively determined through a set of standard meas-
urements; rather, many contributing factors must be observed and analyzed over
the long term” (Tang 2021, 81–82).
These general pitfalls of large infrastructure should also sound familiar to
observers of the BRI. For example, Chinese government-financed infrastruc-
ture and other development projects may insulate host governments from
potential opposition. One study finds that natural resource-related project
financing from China reduces “horizontal” legislative and judicial account-
ability, but has no effect on “vertical” accountability between rulers and their
constituents (Ping, Wang, and Chang 2022). Development projects provided
by the Chinese government are also associated with higher levels of corrup-
tion in local communities that host them (Brazys, Elkink, and Kelly 2017;
Isaksson and Kotsadam 2018). In particular, large-scale infrastructure – which
tends to be located in relatively corrupt and undemocratic countries – may
further exacerbate accountability and governance issues in already corrupt
business environments. Infrastructure projects can do so by creating new
interest groups or strengthening and augmenting existing ones composed of
political and business elites (e.g. Camba 2021).23
The tendency for large infrastructure to encounter delays is also frequently
cited along the BRI. One study examines 431 Chinese-financed development
projects and finds that more than half were completed behind schedule (Malik
et al. 2021, 132). The same study finds that ninety-one projects that underper-
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formed compared to their initially stated objectives in terms of profits, debt

repayments, or implementation milestones. As an example, the Chinese-
financed high-speed railway in Laos experienced major delays in allocating
credit for different phases of the project. This has slowed overall progress and
also left various intended beneficiaries – including Chinese SOEs as well as
Chinese and Laotian workers – worse off (Chen 2020b). On the other hand,
roughly a quarter of projects for which there is information on both start and
end dates were reportedly completed ahead of schedule. Kenya’s SGR is one
well-known example of infrastructure along the BRI completed ahead of time
(Wang 2022).
In short, Chinese overseas infrastructure projects exhibit many of the proper-
ties and tendencies associated with infrastructure in other contexts. It is also
23
On the other hand, Chinese aid and debt does not necessarily work in the way that the “rogue
donor” narrative would suggest. Bader (2015), for instance, finds no evidence that Chinese aid
improves the prospects of political survival for autocrats abroad.
 28 Global China

possible that big-ticket infrastructure loans provided by Chinese policy banks

may produce even greater vulnerability to economic miscalculation on the part
of China’s government, borrower governments, contractor firms, or other stake-
holders due to opaque lending practices. On the other hand, however, being able
to point to examples of efficient implementation is likely an important priority
for China’s government given that speed and efficiency, especially relative to
“traditional” donors and lenders, has become one of its reputational corner-
stones. In any case, assessing the net socioeconomic impacts of overseas
Chinese infrastructure projects, and infrastructure projects in general, is an
arduous task given these projects’ scale, complexity, long time horizons, and
multidimensional impacts.

3.3 Conceptualizing Chinese Global Infrastructure

Researchers in other fields have provided a variety of definitions for infrastruc-
ture, but none are ideally suited for studying Chinese infrastructure in the
Global South. For example, infrastructure can refer broadly to “vast, complex,
and changing systems that support modern societies and economies”
(Carse 2016), or “the physical components of interrelated systems providing
commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living
conditions” (American Society of Civil Engineers 2017). Other researchers
have studied related concepts that overlap with infrastructure. “Megaprojects”
are defined as “large-scale, complex ventures that typically cost $1 billion or
more, take many years to develop and build, involve multiple public and private
stakeholders, are transformational, and impact millions of people” (Flyvbjerg
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2017, 2). Anthropologists have argued that infrastructure possesses important

cultural, social, and political dimensions in addition to financial and economic
concerns, highlighting both its material and immaterial functions. Larkin (2013,
328) defines it as “built networks that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or
ideas and allow for their exchange over space” that are both dependent on and
constitutive of local context. Anand, Gupta, and Appel (2018, 3) further note
that “material infrastructures, including roads and water pipes, electricity
lines and ports, oil pipelines and sewage systems, are dense social, material,
aesthetic, and political formations that are critical both to differentiated experi-
ences of everyday life and to expectations of the future.”24

24
Others point out that infrastructure is both relational and ecological and means different things to
different groups (Star 1999). Local communities and individuals who interact with infrastructure
forge group identities around it (Fredericks 2018). Another related term is “modernization,” or a
country’s attempt “to upgrade its infrastructure to achieve a status that would put it on equal
terms with the great powers” (Denicke 2011, 185).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 29

These definitions are helpful starting points for Chinese global infrastructure.
However, the concepts of “infrastructure” and “megaprojects” are broad and
encompass many projects and initiatives beyond the realm of international
development. These general definitions can also lead to problematic measure-
ment. For example, in the context of Chinese development finance, “infrastruc-
ture” would capture thousands of small-scale, local projects unlikely to be
consequential for Chinese influence or other national- or international-level
outcomes. Similarly, the US$1 billion threshold for a megaproject does not
account for country context and has limited use for development finance
projects since host countries have differently sized economies; one billion
dollars means different things in different places. If applied to Chinese devel-
opment finance, “megaprojects” would include many financially large projects
that are nonetheless relatively inconsequential for studying influence or other
outcomes of interest. Conversely, looking only at projects valued over
US$1 billion would omit hundreds of infrastructure projects with potentially
important influence or other consequences.
Consider a recent Chinese-financed infrastructure project as an example. In
2016, the Chinese government committed a US$80 million grant for the 15 MW
Ruzibazi Hydroelectric Power Plant in Burundi. The plant represents over
2 percent of Burundi’s GDP and is one of the largest hydropower projects in
the country. In contrast, it would rank outside the top 20 power generation
projects that China’s government has financed in Indonesia over the same
period.
I define Chinese global infrastructure as high-visibility, national-level phys-
ical infrastructure projects financed by China’s government in other countries.25
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Given the immense diversity of Chinese state, quasi-state, and non-state actors
involved in overseas development activities, this definition is not meant to
capture every single aspect of Chinese overseas infrastructure. For example, it
omits projects financed by non-Chinese entities and built by Chinese contrac-
tors, even though this is also an already large and growing component of
China’s global development footprint (e.g. Leutert 2019; Zhang 2020). Nor
does this definition include projects financed by China’s government but not
carried out by Chinese companies or other actors. It also omits small-scale,
auxiliary, low-visibility, or other infrastructure unlikely to constitute highly
visible, national projects.26

25
This includes all infrastructure projects financed by any part of China’s government, including
Chinese policy and other state-owned and state-controlled banks.
26
Examples of these include boreholes and wells; electrification schemes, transmission, and
powerlines; telecommunications and surveillance technologies; satellites; and small-scale trans-
portation, energy, and industrial projects.
 30 Global China

Instead, this definition is designed to measure Chinese-financed and -built

infrastructure projects that are global in character relative to other types of
international development projects. Global infrastructure projects are negoti-
ated bilaterally between governments, but these projects engage both state and
non-state actors and produce local, national, and even global socioeconomic,
political, environmental, and other consequences. They are also more likely to
be salient in local, national, and global debates involving a wide range of actors.
For these reasons, global infrastructure is also more likely than other Chinese
development projects to produce influence or other political consequences for
both host country governments and the Chinese government (the focus of
Section 4).
Chinese global infrastructure spans an extremely diverse set of projects that
generally share two important traits. First, relative to other forms of develop-
ment finance, global infrastructure projects are highly visible. They have an
outsized physical presence and also generate higher levels of publicity locally,
nationally, and globally. Physical visibility correlates with project size and
involves tangible and large or centrally located project sites. Media presence
involves heavy publicity, particularly around project milestones such as
announcement, groundbreaking, and completion ceremonies featuring rituals
and performances, ribbon-cuttings, speeches by leaders, or other conspicuous
activities (e.g. Menga 2015, 485). As discussed in the next section, visibility is
an important feature that enables host country governments to brand infrastruc-
ture projects and advertise them to large audiences at home and abroad (e.g.
Hirschman 1967; Dietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018; Baldwin and Winters
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2020). Second, and relatedly, global infrastructure is national in scope within

host countries. Financially and spatially large infrastructure, typically negoti-
ated by (or at least involving approval from) national governments and possess-
ing high visibility, is more likely to be salient in national political discourse
within host countries compared to other projects.
China’s government has primarily financed two types of global infrastructure
since 1949, which are outlined in Table 2.27 First, high-profile infrastructure
projects are massive economic projects typically motivated by a mix of com-
mercial and political considerations (Strange 2023a). High-profile infrastruc-
ture has comprised the bulk of Chinese global infrastructure and encompasses
flagship, big-ticket infrastructure projects that have come to symbolize the BRI.
As the next section illustrates, this project class mostly includes transportation,
energy, and other economic infrastructure.
27
These categories are of course not exhaustive and represent a first step. For example, socially
oriented infrastructure projects such as national-level schools, hospitals, and agricultural infra-
structure are not included in the below analysis, but could be incorporated in future research.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 31

Table 2 Comparing high-profile and prestige infrastructure project features

High-profile Prestige
Visibility High High
Host country National-level National-level
scope
No. projects, >300 >120
pre-2000
No. projects, >900 >250
post-2000
Avg. size, ~US$ 371 million ~US$ 29 million
post-2000
Host Global South Small states in the Global
countries South
Complexity High Low to medium
Commercial Strong Weak
motive
Concessional Sometimes Usually
Host country Sometimes Usually
symbolism
Common Infrastructure projects in Government buildings;
examples transportation, industry, conference and
energy, and other economic convention venues; sports
sectors (see Figure 2) facilities; performing arts
venues (see Figure 3)
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In addition to being highly visible and nationally salient, high-profile infra-

structure generally possesses two additional, related features that make it
a distinct form of political capital for both host governments and China’s
government. First, relative to other development projects, high-profile infra-
structure is financially and operationally large. Since 2000, the typical high-
profile project has cost several hundred million dollars, and many of these
projects have cost more than US$1 billion. In contrast, the average Chinese
foreign aid project commitment since 2000 has cost less than 10 percent of
a high-profile project, or approximately US$23.7 million. High-profile infra-
structure is also physically sizable, encompassing one or more large project
sites. Sheer scale makes high-profile infrastructure inherently different than
smaller, locally focused projects. High-profile infrastructure is often envisioned
by its planners as being “trait making” rather than “trait taking,” with the
potential to transform rather than simply fit into existing local economic and
 32 Global China

social structures (Hirschman 1967, vii, xi). As such, high-profile infrastructure

is not merely about direct economic impact and often involves longer-term
visions of reshaping socioeconomic activity at scale.
Second and relatedly, high-profile infrastructure is complex in terms of its
configuration of stakeholders, financial structure, and operations. High-profile
projects often involve constellations of domestic and foreign actors – such as
central governments of the host and financing countries, local and regional
governments, multilateral development institutions, foreign and local firms, and
foreign and local workers – who perform different project functions such as
financing, design, implementation, operations, and monitoring (Winters 2019;
Strange, Plantan, and Leutert 2023). These projects also involve longer imple-
mentation timelines, more detailed and lengthier contracts, and relatively com-
plicated financing arrangements.
Prestige projects are the second class of Chinese global infrastructure dis-
cussed in this Element. Like high-profile projects, prestige infrastructure is
a well-known component of Chinese development finance. According to earlier
accounts, Chinese overseas prestige projects include national-level government
buildings, stadiums and other large sports facilities, convention and exhibition
centers, and performing arts and cultural venues that are national in scope
(Tull 2006; Bräutigam 2011; Swedlund 2017).
Most prestige projects have been financed as nonrepayable turnkey or “com-
plete projects” (成套项目) in which China’s government is responsible for
project design, construction, and maintenance.28 Chinese financing for prestige
infrastructure is typically provided via nonrepayable grants or interest-free or
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otherwise highly concessional loans. A relatively small group of politically

connected Chinese design and construction companies can bid for contracts
from China’s MOFCOM and profit from implementing prestige projects abroad.
However, these projects, which are on average much financially smaller com-
pared to high-profile projects, are driven primarily by host country demands and
Chinese political interests outlined in Section 4.
These projects are much less expensive than high-profile infrastructure but can
still have an outsized presence in some host countries. One reason for this is that
prestige projects can serve as national symbolic capital for host country
governments.29 Political symbols are difficult to define due to their ubiquity
(e.g. Edelman 1972; Dittmer 1977; O’Neill 2001), and national symbols here
refer generally to representations of national themes or ideas embedded in

28
By the early 1970s China had already financed and built approximately 100 turnkey projects
(Bräutigam 2011, 41).
29
High-profile infrastructure can also be nationally symbolic, but this is not necessarily a defining
or prerequisite feature.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 33

infrastructure projects. Prestige projects themselves can become national symbols

or instead can transmit higher-level, national ideals such as modernity, progress, or
unity (Steinberg 1987; van der Westhuizen 2007). As discussed in Section 4, host
governments in the Global South typically frame prestige projects around themes
of national identity, development, progress, and modernity, and also situate them in
the context of a country’s regional or international status ambitions.

3.4 Measuring Chinese Global Infrastructure

This section measures Chinese global infrastructure projects by operationaliz-
ing the definitions introduced in Section 3.3. I carefully combed over each
development project that China’s government has financed during the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries using the aforementioned datasets, and identified
physical infrastructure projects financed by China’s government since 1949.
These were then classified as high-profile, prestige, or other (non-global) types
of infrastructure (Strange 2023a; Strange 2023b).
This approach provides a more direct, sharper measure of Chinese global
infrastructure than earlier research. As an example, consider the transportation
sector, an infrastructure-heavy sector often used to proxy for infrastructure. The
two datasets collectively include over 1,200 project records in the Transport and
Storage sector within the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS).
Individually coding infrastructure projects demonstrates that this sector contains
over 700 actual unique infrastructure projects. About 450 of these fit the definition
of either high-profile or prestige projects. Nearly half of the project records
included in the transport sector are in fact additional financial transactions;
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surveying, maintenance, or other supplementary work; supplementary or auxil-

iary sub-infrastructures for a larger project; follow-on phases for an existing
project; Chinese bank contributions to syndicated loans for projects not primarily
financed or built by Chinese actors; or otherwise vague projects without sufficient
information about a specific project.30 Directly coding unique infrastructure
projects provides a more accurate picture of when and where the Chinese
government has supported global infrastructure across the Global South.
Using these definitions reveals that China’s government has financed over 1,500
unique global infrastructure projects since 1949.31 The Chinese government

30
Unlike earlier studies, I exclude “maintenance” project records that represent follow-up activ-
ities to ongoing projects. This primarily includes feasibility studies, additional financing for an
earlier project, maintenance work on physical project sites, dispatching of experts, or technical
assistance to existing projects. I include expansion, renovation, revitalization, and modernization
projects that involve significant new project activity.
31
This figure is considerably higher if maintenance projects for existing Chinese-financed
infrastructure are included, though I exclude these projects in this Element.
 34 Global China

Figure 1 Global Infrastructure salience in Chinese overseas development

projects, 1949–2017
Source: Custer et al. (2021); Dreher et al. (2022); Strange (2023a). More lightly shaded
bars indicate a higher level of salience, which is measured as the percentage of all Chinese
development projects that are global infrastructure projects committed in a given year.

committed over 400 Chinese global infrastructure during the twentieth century.
The data also contain over 5,000 physical infrastructure projects, including both
global as well as other smaller and less visible infrastructure projects, approxi-
mately 1,500 of which were provided before 2000.
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Combining data on China’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century global infra-

structure provides useful context for the BRI. Figure 1 plots the number of global
infrastructure projects – including both high-profile and prestige projects – com-
mitted annually by China’s government since 1949.32 It illustrates, in line with
previous research, that the sheer annual volume of Chinese global infrastructure
rose dramatically after the “Going Out” strategy and again after the launch of the
BRI. However, it also shows that global infrastructure was actually equally or
more salient as a share of China’s total development projects during the first two
decades of the PRC. Global infrastructure was a major project class well before
China’s development finance was reoriented to support national economic object-
ives outlined in the “Going Out” strategy and reinforced under the BRI. Over
a quarter of all of China’s global infrastructure across the Global South to date
was committed before 2000.

32
Figure B1 in the online Appendix plots the annual salience of high-profile and prestige
infrastructure separately and shows similar trends.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 35

Figure 2 Most common Chinese high-profile infrastructure project types,

1949–2017
Note: These totals are approximations based on keyword searches of high-profile project
titles and descriptions.
Source: Strange (2023a).
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High-profile projects have accounted for the majority of Chinese global

infrastructure. The data include nearly 1,200 high-profile projects in over 120
countries since 1949. Figure 2 plots the most common types of high-profile
projects that China’s government has financed and built in developing countries
since 1949. The pre- and post-2000 distributions are similar and show that
transportation infrastructure such as roads, bridges, airports, railways, and
maritime ports collectively account for over a third of China’s high-profile
projects. Power generation infrastructure has been the other major project
type and represents approximately a quarter of all high-profile projects.
Figure B2 (online Appendix) maps the global distribution of high-profile
infrastructure and Table A1 (online Appendix) lists the top host countries in
terms of the number of projects. These major infrastructure projects have
historically been most heavily concentrated in throughout various regions of
Africa and Asia. High-profile infrastructure has been particularly prolific in
Southeast Asia, and Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam are all
among the top host countries.
 36 Global China

Figure 3 Chinese prestige infrastructure projects by type, 1949–2017

Source: Strange (2023b).

Prestige projects are smaller and less numerous than high-profile infrastruc-
ture, but have also been a consistent and important class of Chinese global
infrastructure. They have appeared in roughly ninety developing countries since
1949, and as Figure 3 (and Table A2 in the online Appendix) show, China’s
government has financed and constructed nearly 400 prestige projects since
1950. Over 120 of these were financed before 2000. In both the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, China has financed hundreds of prestige projects in the
form of government buildings, stadiums, conference venues, and entertainment
and cultural venues.33 Figure B3 in the online Appendix maps the global
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allocation of prestige projects since 1949. It illustrates that China’s government

has allocated prestige projects mostly in developing countries located in Asia,
Africa, and in small island regions such as Oceania and the Caribbean. Among
African countries, DRC, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Guinea are all among the
top host countries. Small island states such as Samoa, Cape Verde, Comoros,
Vanuatu, and Antigua and Barbuda are also among the most common host states.
High-profile and prestige infrastructure both constitute high-visibility,
nationally salient projects, but China’s government has different motivations
for financing them abroad. High-profile projects are typically heavily or at least
partially motivated by commercial and development objectives. Their visibility
and national presence – combined with their sheer material and financial scale,
operational and financial complexity, and long time horizons – makes them
textbook risky infrastructure projects as outlined in Section 2. In other research,

33
This is a conservative estimate that focuses only on these well-known project types.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 37

I examine the factors that shape the global allocation of high-profile infrastruc-
ture and find that commercial considerations play an important role (Strange
2023a). This finding is largely consistent with that of Dreher et al. (2022), who
show that debt-financed projects from China follow a commercial logic.
In contrast, prestige infrastructure is smaller and less heavily motivated by
economic considerations on the part of host country governments, China’s
government, and other state or non-state actors on either side. In my research
on prestige infrastructure, I instead find that these projects are heavily concen-
trated in the smallest states in the Global South whose leaders can request,
acquire, and strategically brand Chinese-financed prestige projects as symbolic
national achievements. My analysis shows that prestige project allocation is
also associated with lower levels of economic development and smaller popu-
lations (Strange 2023b). In contrast, prestige projects have not been more likely
to flow to more or less democratic governments. This suggests that these
projects are not merely driven by host country leaders operating in highly
clientelistic or institutionally weak political environments who need to rely on
private goods provision to stay in office (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003;
Robinson and Torvik 2005).
Global infrastructure’s historical lineage is notable given important shifts in
China’s approach to overseas development finance outlined in Section 2. While
its global infrastructure initially peaked in the 1970s at the height of Mao’s
revolutionary foreign policy, China continued to finance and build these projects
albeit at a more modest scale during the 1980s and 1990s. Consider Chinese-
financed prestige projects. By the middle of the 1980s, China’s government was
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squarely in the early reform and opening period and intent on recalibrating and
downsizing its overstretched aid campaign. Nonetheless, in 1980 China and Cape
Verde signed an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (经济技术合作
协议)–a framework agreement commonly used throughout the twentieth century
for China’s overseas development project agreements–wherein China agreed to
fund the construction of a parliamentary hall in Cape Verde. The project was
previously suspended, but in July the two sides finalized an agreement for
a US$13.2 million loan. Construction began less than two years later and the
12,000-square meter building was finished in 1985. The same year, China financed
and built a People’s Palace in Sao Tome and Principe. Other types of prestige
projects, such as sports stadiums, also remained as stable fixtures in China’s
overseas financing portfolio, as shown by Figure 3. In October 1985, Senegalese
President Abdou Diouf attended the completion ceremony of a China-aided
Football Stadium in Dakar financed with a US$12 million loan initially conceived
in 1973 and implemented by China National Corporation for Overseas Economic
 38 Global China

Cooperation (CCOEC, 中国海外经济合作总公司) . The stadium broke ground in

1982, and upon completion had a capacity of 60,000 spectators.
The aggregate statistics mentioned above illustrate the long pedigree of
Chinese global infrastructure, but they do not capture the outsized stature of
many important individual projects. Global infrastructures continue to occupy
a central role in China’s overseas development program and include many of its
most famous (and infamous) projects. The aforementioned TAZARA Railway
is perhaps the most fabled and well-studied example (See Figure 4). National
leaders from Tanzania, Zambia, and China all played a crucial role in realizing
the project (Brazinsky 2017, 297). In the summer of 1965, Zhou Enlai submitted
an offer to Tanzanian President Nyerere to construct the railway, which the
World Bank had refused to fund under pressure from the US and UK (Ismael
1971; Monson 2009). In September 1967, China’s government agreed to
finance and construct the railway with an interest-free loan valued at
CNY988 million repayable over 25 years after a five-year grace period. One
of the rationales for TAZARAwould be to provide a transport route for Zambian
exports to the Tanzanian coast. The railway was completed in June 1975 after
five years of construction and follow-up agreements. During peak project
implementation, it involved an estimated 38,000 Tanzanian and Zambian work-
ers and 13,500 Chinese technical and engineering personnel. The line runs for
1860 km from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia. In
addition to the original railway financing and construction, the historical dataset
discussed earlier includes dozens of follow-up project activities on TAZARA
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Figure 4 TAZARA railway (坦赞铁路)

Source: CIDCA.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 39

including additional loans and grants, equipment donations, technical assistance

and cooperation, and maintenance on TAZARA, which remains in operation
today. The railway reportedly handled under 10 percent of cargo brought into
Tanzania from the Port Dar es Salaam as of 2022, and China’s government is
planning to help revive it once again.34
TAZARA is one of hundreds of high-profile infrastructure projects China
funded and built in the Global South during the twentieth century. Several years
earlier, it agreed to provide an interest-free loan to build a hydroelectric dam and
power station at Guinea’s Kinkon Falls (金康水电站), which, like TAZARA, had
failed to secure Western financing after Guinea’s former colonial ruler, the French
government, judged that the project was not viable (Zhou and Xiong 2017).
Construction began in July 1964 about 400 km from the capital of Conakry.
When completed, Guinea’s deputy foreign minister attended the inauguration and
handover ceremony of the 235-meter-long, 4x800KW dam. Today, the hydro-
power station appears on the Guinean franc (5,000 Francs Guinéens). The 20,000
franc banknote features the Kaleta Dam, another Chinese-financed high-profile
infrastructure project that was constructed approximately 200 km west of Kinkon
Falls nearly five decades later (Searsey 2015).
Prestige projects also became common shortly after China’s government
started providing overseas development finance. In February 1964, Zhou Enlai
visited Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and received a request from President Sirimavo
Bandaranaike to assist with the construction of an international conference center.
The Chinese government agreed and the project, the Bandaranaike Memorial
International Conference Hall (纪念班达拉奈克国际会议大厦), broke ground
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in late 1970 after a multiyear delay caused by opposition from the incumbent
Third Dudley Senanayake cabinet. Shown in Figure 5, it was completed in 1973
and is still in operation today following several renovations and upgrades.
These projects, in addition to any economic goals, were also intended to advance
China’s policy goals and win popular approval – dynamics explored in Section 4 –
during a time when China’s overseas aid was unabashedly politically motivated. But
Chinese global infrastructure projects also appeared during periods when China’s
development finance was less politicized and more economically oriented, such as
the early reform and opening period.35 In 1977, as China’s revolutionary foreign
policy began to subside, the governments of China and Mauritania inked a protocol
to build Mauritania’s Nouakchott Friendship Port (努瓦克肖特友谊港). China’s
government used a long-term, interest-free loan estimated to be worth over

34
www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3189645/50-years-chinese-role-africas-free
dom-railway-zambia-tanzania.
35
Some infrastructure projects were formally committed or under implementation at the time of
a Chinese policy shift and were still eventually completed.
 40 Global China

Figure 5 Bandaranaike memorial international conference hall (纪念班达拉奈

克国际会议大厦)
Source: Country (Region) Guide for Foreign Investment and Cooperation: Sri Lanka
2021(对外投资合作国别 (地区) 指南 斯里兰卡 2021年版), Embassy of the People’s
Republic of China in Sri Lanka ECCO and Chinese Academy of International Trade and
Economic Cooperation (CAITEC).

US$150 million. The port was completed and handed over to Mauritania’s govern-
ment in July 1986, making it Mauritania’s first deep-water port and China’s second-
largest aid project after TAZARA (Shi 1989, 145, 199, 202–203). Other forms of
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Chinese-financed transportation infrastructure continued to proliferate throughout

the 1970s and 1980s. After it severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1972,
Madagascar signed an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement in
July 1975 in which China agreed to assist with the construction of the Moramanga-
Andranonampango Highway (木腊芒加至昂德拉努南邦古公路). Phase
I construction began in December 1978 and the 83.6-km highway was completed
by the end of 1985, as displayed in Figure 6. Madagascar’s president attended the
completion ceremony for the road, which was funded with an interest-free loan from
the Chinese government.
China’s government continued to finance and build prestige and, to a lesser
extent, high-profile infrastructure during the 1980s and 1990s even as it became
a net aid recipient and focused on smaller, economically pragmatic overseas
projects. In January 1979 it began construction on the Palais des Congrés de Kara
(卡拉会议大厦) in Togo, which was finished in 1982, shortly after the completion
of another prestige project, Togo’s Palais des Congrès de Lomé. High-level officials
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 41

Figure 6 Moramanga-Andranonampango highway (木腊芒加至昂德拉努南

邦古公路)
Source: COMPLANT.

on both sides attended a handover ceremony in December 1982, and a larger

ribbon-cutting celebration was held the following month featuring Togo’s
President Gnassingbé Eyadéma. In 1985, China’s government signed an agreement
to provide an interest-free loan and construct Ghana’s National Theater (加纳国家
剧院). The theater project broke ground in August 1990 and was completed and
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handed over two years later in 1992. China’s government also financed and built
a CNY50 million Kathmandu International Conference Center (加德满都国际会
议大厦) agreed upon in 1987. Over the same period, China remained active in
constructing national stadiums in the Global South. Kenyan president Daniel arap
Moi visited China in 1980 and requested a national sports center. The two countries
signed an Agreement on Economic and Technical Cooperation in September and
a protocol for the Nairobi Athletic Complex. After a series of follow-up agreements,
construction on the Moi International Sports Center (莫伊国际体育中心), shown
in Figure 7, began in December 1982 and cost roughly US$52 million, most of
which was provided through interest-free loans. The first phase was completed in
1987 and handed over in time for the All-Africa Games later that year.
High-profile infrastructure also remained as a component of Chinese devel-
opment finance through the end of the twentieth century. For example, China
financed and built the Thanlyin Bridge (仰光–丁茵大桥) in Myanmar connect-
ing the city of Thanlyin to the former capital of Yangon. Construction on
 42 Global China

Figure 7 Moi international sports center (莫伊国际体育中心)

Source: The Standard.

Myanmar’s first major bridge began in 1986 and finished in July 1993 – pictured
in Figure 8 – after encountering delays caused by nationwide political instability
and protests during Myanmar’s 1988 Uprising. It was one of China’s largest
overseas road projects at the time and was implemented by China Railway
Major Bridge Engineering Group (中铁大桥局).
Some of these examples highlight that China’s government has financed global
infrastructure where other donors and lenders refused to. But this certainly does
not imply that the Chinese government, historically or during the current period,
accepts all project requests it receives from other countries. For instance, as China
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tempered its revolutionary foreign aid strategy and adjusted its regional foreign
policy priorities during the 1970s, “requests from West Africa, like the railway
between Guinea and Mali or the potentially profitable Manantali Dam in the
Senegal River basin, were systematically rejected” (Lorenzini 2019, 116).
China’s government does not accept all requests it receives for high-profile
infrastructure today, either. China Eximbank has backed out of multiple rail
projects in recent years, such as the modernization of a railway segment between
Kaduna and Kano in Nigeria because of concerns about the COVID-19 pan-
demic, Nigeria’s ability to repay, and heightened scrutiny of Chinese rail projects
in the country.36 Host countries too, of course, can walk away from potential
global infrastructure projects, and this has occurred at times during the first
decade of the BRI (e.g. Dourado 2023). Nor do all initial agreements come to
fruition. Many historical and contemporary project proposals have failed to make

36
www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3216391/china-making-cautious-return-african-
infrastructure-funding.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 43

Figure 8 Thanlyin bridge (仰光–丁茵大桥)

Source: Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Myanmar.

it past initial negotiation and commitment stages. For instance, China, Mali, and
Senegal in 1968 agreed to finance a 360-km cross-border railway providing
maritime access to Mali, but the project, previously dismissed by Mali’s French
colonial rulers, stalled after Senegal backed out (Bräutigam 2019a).
To summarize, carefully defining and measuring Chinese global infrastruc-
ture reveals an important project class that has been a tenacious cornerstone of
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China’s development finance program. The relative salience of these projects

has shifted at times – rising, for example, during China’s revolutionary foreign
policy, and declining during the early reform and opening period – but the
Chinese government has continuously financed and constructed high-profile
and prestige infrastructure projects across the Global South amid shifting
political and economic priorities. In aggregate, perhaps no other donor or
creditor has been as consistent in their willingness to fund and build global
infrastructure. As the following section discusses, the political attraction of
global infrastructure, both for the governments of host countries and the
Chinese government, helps explain this tenacity.

4 The Infrastructure-Influence Nexus

Contemporary economic goals alone cannot explain Chinese global infrastruc-
ture given its twentieth-century pedigree. This section turns to the political
dynamics of Chinese global infrastructure, with a particular focus on China’s
 44 Global China

pursuit of international influence. It first examines policy and academic debates

about infrastructure and influence. It then outlines several links between the
two, and conceives of global infrastructure as unique political capital – relative
to other international development projects – that produces both intended and
unintended influence outcomes for China’s government.

4.1 Roads to Influence?

Chinese global infrastructure has alarmed the United States and other liberal
democracies concerned with Beijing’s growing global clout. The suggestion
that global infrastructure potentially generates influence is not farfetched.37
A large literature on the political economy of development finance shows that
donor and creditor governments supply development finance – including infra-
structure – to pursue influence and reap economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical
benefits (e.g. Maizels and Nissanke 1984; Meernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998;
Burnside and Dollar 2000). As mentioned in Section 2.2.1, the Chinese govern-
ment is no exception to this larger pattern in international politics.
Moreover, infrastructure projects were important influence-seeking nodes
for donors in earlier eras. Both before and after World War II, a variety of
powerful states invested in transportation infrastructure in colonies and
newly independent developing countries to project military and logistical
power (e.g. Khalili 2021). Throughout much of the Cold War, major powers
competed for influence in developing countries by financing and building
high-profile infrastructure. The USSR, United States, and China all invested
in such projects overseas (e.g. Westad 2005; Latham 2011; Mertha 2014;
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Engerman 2018; Lorenzini 2019). Powerful states, including Israel, Japan,

Russia, and the United Kingdom, also funded and built prestige projects
across the Global South during the twentieth century. More recently, “emer-
ging” donors and lenders such as India, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have begun
to finance high-profile and prestige projects during the twenty-first century,
and the Chinese government is now the largest provider of these projects
(Strange 2023b).
Research on China’s infrastructure-influence nexus has sometimes made
strong claims. One study, for example, argues that China’s government envi-
sions the BRI as “an integrated and interconnected Eurasian continent with
enduring authoritarian political systems, where China’s influence has grown
to the point it has muted any opposition and gained acquiescence and defer-
ence” (Rolland 2017, 137). One book claims that “Whoever is able to build

37
Beyond visible, site-specific physical infrastructure, financial and other forms of infrastructure
are also important for influence-seeking (de Goede and Westermeier 2022).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 45

and control the infrastructure linking the two ends of Eurasia will rule the
world,” and that “investment, infrastructure and trade can be used as leverage
to shape relations with other countries even more in its favor” (Maçães 2018,
3, 30). Another recent monograph is even more explicit in linking infrastruc-
ture to influence, declaring that “We are in the midst of a global infrastructure
war” and that China is “`weaponizing’ infrastructure by creating a nexus of
road, rail, and sea connections spanning half the world to secure prosperity-
enhancing trade and investment opportunities and to project both hard (eco-
nomic) and soft (cultural) power in the process” (Rowley 2020, xxii, 1;
emphasis added).38
For the most part, however, such claims are anecdotal and underspecified.
They are not accompanied by careful conceptualization or measurement needed
to assess whether and how global infrastructure generates influence. Other
recent research treats the infrastructure-influence nexus more carefully. Ho
(2020) suggests that Chinese infrastructure in Southeast Asia wields both
structural power and discursive power. Hillman (2019a, 2) specifies twelve
influence functions across three stages of financing, design and build, and
ownership and operation, from buying policy concessions to collecting intelli-
gence. Others highlight potential security implications of specific types of
Chinese-owned or operated overseas infrastructure such as maritime ports
(Kardon and Leutert 2022), government buildings (Meservey 2020), or surveil-
lance systems (Greitens 2020). Lampton, Ho, and Kuik (2020) and Ho (2020)
examine China’s use of rail infrastructure to exercise different forms of influ-
ence, including structural dependence, narrative control, military access, and
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economic integration.
A growing chorus of scholars have additionally pointed out that Chinese
influence hinges on host country factors, not simply what China desires or does.
Hillman (2020)’s study focuses on infrastructure along the BRI and points out
that the success of BRI infrastructure also depends on choices made by host
country governments.39 Studies such as Lampton, Ho, and Kuik (2020) and
Wong (2021) similarly show that host agency – manifested through popular and
elite opinion and contestation, domestic political institutions, civil society
organizations, and so on – fundamentally shapes BRI infrastructure

38
Others claim that specific forms of global infrastructure, such as China’s overseas high-speed
rail, “provides a powerful means to project broader political influence and deepen bilateral ties”
(Ker 2017, 3).
39
Though it also suggests that China can largely control the BRI’s contribution to its power, which
“hinges on China having the discipline to choose the right projects and walk away from the
wrong ones” (Hillman 2020, 14).
 46 Global China

negotiations, implementation, and reception, as well as the influence conse-

quences for China.
All of this research is a helpful start, but most existing studies emphasize
global infrastructure’s deliberate, positive influence potential while ignoring or
downplaying its risks. It focuses heavily on efforts by the Chinese government
and envisions scenarios in which China, the influence-seeker, purposefully
wields influence over smaller states through global infrastructure negotiations
and implementation. While some existing studies acknowledge the risks of
global infrastructure for Chinese influence, few carefully study them.40 As the
following sections discuss, global infrastructure’s distinctive attributes relative
to other development projects – discussed in Section 3 – complicate how these
projects actually affect China’s influence.

4.2 Clarifying Influence Outcomes

Clearer definitions are needed for linking infrastructure to influence. Having
conceptualized global infrastructure in Section 3, this section turns to different
types of influence that states desire in international politics. Much like “infra-
structure,” “influence” has often been deployed as a nebulous, catch-all term
when discussing the BRI. Influence is traditionally defined in political science
as an actor’s ability to change another actor’s behavior in ways that reflect its
own desires and in ways that the other actor would not otherwise choose (e.g.
Dahl 1984). However, in the context of global infrastructure, a more inclusive,
multilayered conceptualization is better equipped to document different influ-
ence processes and outcomes (e.g. Goh 2014; Kastner and Pearson 2021; Fung
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et al. 2023).
As a starting point, global infrastructure, and development finance more
generally, can be used to pursue least two general types of influence
outcomes.41 First, it can generate “elite influence,” or state-level outcomes
that support the donor or lender’s national interests (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita
and Smith 2007; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2009; Dreher, Sturm, and
Vreeland 2009; Dreher et al. 2018). In the context of international development,
elite influence has generally referred to policy concessions or other high-level,
state-to-state influence outcomes. Elite influence is also the primary outcome
that many studies have examined in the context of Chinese “economic state-
craft.” For instance, using a variety of data sources, earlier research finds that
China can secure influence in the form of UNGA or UNSC votes, or diplomatic

40
For example, Hillman (2019a; 2020) mentions unintended influence consequences, but primarily
focuses on deliberate channels by which China pursues influence.
41
This paragraph draws on Strange (Forthcoming).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 47

solidarity on various domestic and international political issues, by providing

economic carrots to other countries (e.g. Flores-Macias and Kreps 2013;
Kastner 2016). Elite influence hinges on the behavior of national leaders of
countries that host infrastructure projects.
In addition, infrastructure and other projects can be used to pursue “popular
influence” that enables donors and lenders to accumulate “soft power” and win
“hearts and minds” among foreign audiences by demonstrating generosity, com-
petence, or other desirable attributes (Berman, Shapiro, and Felter 2011;
Goldsmith, Horiuchi, and Wood 2014; Dietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018;
Blair, Marty, and Roessler 2022; Wellner et al. Forthcoming).42 Popular influence
refers to changes in foreign public opinion that can translate into elite-level policy
outcomes that support states’ economic, political, or security interests. Like elite
influence, popular influence is an important outcome for states’ security, political,
and economic interests (e.g. Goldsmith and Horiuchi 2012), and states thus care
deeply about accumulating it in other countries (Owen 2010; Allan, Vucetic, and
Hopf 2018; Brazys and Dukalskis 2019). This is one reason why development
organizations spend large sums on highly visible projects and also invest millions
of dollars in branding – i.e. labelling, displaying, publicizing, or otherwise
communicating – their international development activities to citizens of other
countries (Dietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018).43 Visibility matters for popular
influence-seeking because it increases the likelihood that individuals will be
aware of a project in the first place, making it easier for them to accurately
associate the project with different actors.44 Compared to other development
projects, highly visible global infrastructure is thus particularly likely to affect
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a donor or creditor’s popular influence by either improving or hurting its image

among foreign publics.

4.3 How Global Infrastructure Helps China Pursue Influence

Global infrastructures are arguably China’s most consequential development
projects for questions of influence. Both the sheer size and political salience of
these projects make global infrastructure politically valuable both for host
country governments and for donors and lenders seeking elite or popular
influence.

42
Soft power is usually defined as governments’ ability to advance their interests via “co-optation
and attraction rather than exclusively through coercion,” and favorable foreign public opinion is
a common measure of soft power (e.g., Nye 2004; Goldsmith and Horiuchi 2012).
43
Major donors like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and
counterpart agencies of other OECD members actively brand their aid (Moore 2018), as do
“emerging” donors and lenders including China (Rudyak 2019b).
44
This should not be taken for granted, as available evidence shows that observers often have
incomplete information on development project actors (e.g. Baldwin and Winters 2020).
 48 Global China

4.3.1 Global Infrastructure as National Political Capital

Global infrastructure helps support Chinese influence-seeking in part because
it is politically useful to host country governments that acquire it. It is thus
useful to first consider how global infrastructure’s visibility and national
salience create political opportunity for host governments. It is well-estab-
lished in political economy research that delivering visible infrastructure and
other projects can sometimes benefit politicians domestically. Politicians at
various levels of government thus often have political incentives to pursue
domestically financed infrastructure and other visible development projects
(Mani and Mukand 2007; Harding 2015; Lei and Zhou 2022). For govern-
ments unable to finance major infrastructure projects internally, international
development capital offers otherwise available opportunities. For example,
host country leaders can sometimes use foreign aid projects to bolster their
own political authority, especially when these projects are highly visible
(Briggs 2012; Weghorst and Lindberg 2013; Cruz and Schneider 2017;
Marx 2018).
Global infrastructure projects offer major potential as national-level eco-
nomic and political capital for host country leaders. These projects are
potentially politically useful for a number of reasons. Governments can
acquire externally financed infrastructure projects and brand them as
national achievements, allowing them to claim credit for major economic
development initiatives and pursue higher support among relevant domestic
audiences. In addition to the promise of economic development, global
infrastructure enables host country leaders to pursue a variety of additional
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strategic goals. Though public infrastructure is typically viewed as a public

good, some infrastructures also allow states to provide patronage to politic-
ally important constituents, and this is one explanation for why countries like
Ghana and Zambia, to name but two, have historically invested in socioeco-
nomically questionable projects (e.g. Robinson and Torvik 2005). Other
infrastructure projects can facilitate the extension of material power at
home by enhancing the state’s capacity in various policy domains as well
as its territorial reach throughout the country (Herbst 2000, 42; Guldi 2012).
Infrastructure – including both administrative and physical structures – is
thus an important tool for statebuilding and increasing the state’s monopoly
on domestic resources and power (e.g. Mann 1984; Tilly 1990; Centeno
2002). Externally financed infrastructure that serves these functions can
similarly provide host country governments with additional capital for
enhancing state authority.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 49

Global infrastructure can also possess symbolic value for host states in addition
to material functions. Large infrastructure projects can play nationally symbolic
roles as “objects of imagination, vision, and hope” (Müller-Mahn, Mkutu, and
Kioko 2021). As an example, Pakistan’s government financed hydroelectric power
stations and a new capital city during the 1960s that demonstrated the govern-
ment’s power and transmitted “national imageries,” and more recently has
invested in urban infrastructure projects such as rapid transit systems in part to
provide imagery and showcase performative infrastructure that reflects “world
class” aspirations (Sajjad and Javed 2022, 1498–1499). As Larkin (2018) explains,
the political value of infrastructure operates materially – for instance, by delivering
economic value or physically increasing a government’s ruling capacity – as well
as aesthetically, by engaging individuals and communities.45 Governments and
leaders who can provide symbolic, national-level projects may hope to bolster
their standing among relevant elite or popular audiences.
Alternatively, they may be able to use global infrastructures to exercise
symbolic power – generally conceptualized by Bourdieu (1991) as the act of
constructing or reinforcing perceived political or social realities – by aggressively
branding them during important project milestones and associating projects with
their own political authority (Steinberg 1987). Global infrastructure projects,
though financed and built by foreign actors, can allow leaders to acquire and
convey national political symbols. This makes global infrastructure politically
valuable for governments relative to other development projects, and situates
them in a broader phenomenon of states’ strategic use of symbolic and performa-
tive tools (e.g. Bourdieu 1991; Wedeen 2015; Ding 2020).
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Another possibility is that infrastructure offers otherwise unavailable oppor-

tunities to pursue regional or international status. Acquiring prestige projects
could lead to a sense of enhanced status by prompting regime elites or citizens to
positively evaluate their nation relative to neighboring or other countries (Frank
1985). This can be an important motivator for states’ investment in large visible
infrastructure. For example, Ethiopia’s recent investment in conspicuous, luxury
infrastructure in urban areas such as palaces, parks, and residences appears to be
part of a bid to increase its regional status by targeting domestic elites, Ethiopian
diaspora communities, and foreigners (Terrefe 2020; Gebreluel 2023). In the
context of prestige projects, for instance, securing the region’s newest and most
modern entertainment venue, convention center, or football stadium may be
perceived by both leaders and members of the public as a status-changing
development.
45
Infrastructures “are made up of desire as much as concrete or steel and to separate off these
dimensions is to miss out on the powerful ways they are consequential for our world”
(Larkin 2018, 176).
 50 Global China

Both historical and contemporary Chinese global infrastructures display

many of these functions. For example, both historically and in recent years,
host country leaders have secured Chinese-financed prestige infrastructure in the
lead-up to regionally important events. For example, In the late 1950s China’s
government agreed to finance and build a sports facility for Cambodia as it
prepared to host the Asian Games of the Games of New Emerging Forces
(GANEFO). Over fifty years later, China again assisted Cambodia with
a stadium after Prime Minister Hun Sen requested it in 2014 in preparation for
hosting the 2023 Southeast Asian Games. China completed Morodok Techo
National Stadium, a US$169-million project, in December 2021 after four years
of work.
As shown in Section 3.4, autocratic governments are not the only regimes
interested in Chinese global infrastructure. In March 2009, for instance,
Costa Rica’s government held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new 35,000-
seat national stadium (displayed in Figure 9). It cost over $100 million and
was completed in March 2011 after China’s government financed and built
the project. For Costa Rica’s government, the arena was an important source
of national political capital. It enabled them to deliver a national-level
landmark that would be highly visible to domestic and international audi-
ences. Costa Rican President Óscar Arias was eager to bolster Costa Rica’s
international standing and requested for China’s government to provide the
stadium while in Beijing for a state visit during October 2007. After the
project was initiated, Costa Rica’s government utilized key moments to brand
the stadium as a central achievement of both the country and the government
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(DeHart 2012; Verri 2020).

Figure 9 National stadium of Costa Rica (哥斯达黎加国家体育场)

Source: Central South Architectural Design Institute.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 51

In short, global infrastructure projects offer national leaders of developing

countries otherwise unavailable opportunities to acquire, deploy, and brand high-
visibility, nationally salient projects. These symbolic projects have a variety of
economic and political functions, which make them valuable sources of political
capital both for host countries. A growing crop of research highlights the domes-
tic political value of Chinese-financed infrastructure projects for host country
leaders seeking political security and legitimation at home (e.g. Dreher et al.
2019; Kuik 2021; Wang 2022).46 Their domestic political value also makes global
infrastructures useful for China’s international interests.

4.3.2 Global Infrastructure and Elite Influence

China’s government can sometimes convert global infrastructure into elite

influence, such as political support by host country governments. Global
infrastructure projects are useful for elite influence-seeking because they
typically directly involve national leaders from host countries. Consider the
examples of sports stadiums mentioned earlier. China granted the request for
Costa’s Rica’s national stadium during its pursuit of diplomatic influence vis-
à-vis Costa Rica. The national stadium was the “crown jewel” of a larger
package given to Costa Rica in exchange for abandoning diplomatic relations
with Taiwan, and Beijing agreed to grant and build the stadium a few months
after Costa Rica severed diplomatic ties with Taipei in June 2007. This
particular instance is emblematic of China’s longstanding approach of using
global infrastructure and other development projects to establish and bolster
political allegiances (Kao 1988). Similarly, Cambodia’s aforementioned
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national stadiums are two of several prestige infrastructure projects that

have helped China’s government secure Cambodia’s consistent diplomatic
support over several decades (see Tables A1 and A2).
Donors and lenders regularly use development finance to pursue policy
concessions and other elite influence outcomes, and the sheer size of global
infrastructure – particularly high-profile projects – may make them especially
consequential for securing influence over host states. China’s global infra-
structure has indeed been linked to Chinese influence-seeking since the Mao
era. A prime example is China’s successful campaign to unseat Taiwan and
claim China’s permanent seat at the United Nations in 1971. Table 3 docu-
ments China’s provision of global infrastructure projects to UN member states
who participated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758,
through which the PRC was recognized as the sole legitimate representative

46
As discussed below, however, there is little consensus over whether this exercise systematically
translates into increased elite or popular support of leaders.
 52 Global China

Table 3 Chinese global infrastructure allocation to voting countries on United

Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 (October 1971)

Against
Period In favor (pro-PRC) (pro-ROC) Abstain
1966−1971 Afghanistan (1), Khmer Republic (2)
Albania (9), Algeria
(2), Burma (2),
Ceylon (2),
Equatorial Guinea
(1), Ethiopia (2),
Guinea (7), Mali (3),
Mauritania (3),
Nepal (3), Pakistan
(4), People’s
Democratic Republic
of Yemen (4), Sierra
Leone (6), Somalia
(5), Sudan (1), Syrian
Arab Republic (1),
United Republic of
Tanzania (4), Zambia
(2)
1972−1977 Afghanistan (2), Albania Chad (1), Dahomey Jamaica (1),
(2), Burundi (3), (1), Upper Volta Mauritius
Cameroon (3), (1), Congo DRC (1)
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Ceylon (1), Equatorial (3), Gambia (1),

Guinea (2), Ethiopia Madagascar (5),
(2), Ghana (1), Malta (5)
Guyana (2), Iraq (1),
Laos (2), Mali (2),
Morocco (1), Nepal
(9), Pakistan (1),
People’s Democratic
Republic of Yemen
(1), People’s Republic
of the Congo (3),
People’s Democratic
Republic of Yemen
(1), Rwanda (3),
Senegal (3), Sierra
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 53

Table 3 (cont.)

Against
Period In favor (pro-PRC) (pro-ROC) Abstain

Leone (2), Sudan (6),

Syrian Arab Republic
(3), Tunisia (1),
Uganda (1), United
Republic of Tanzania
(1), Yemen (7),
Zambia (2)

Source: Strange (2023a) and United Nations Digital Library (General Assembly, 26th
session: 1976th plenary meeting, Monday, October 25, 1971, New York). Only low- and
middle-income developing countries are included in the table. The figures in the table
include both high-profile and prestige global infrastructure projects. The numbers in the
table are based on committed projects or, in case a specific commitment date is not
available, project start or completion dates.

of China to the UN.47 In the years leading up to the vote, China’s government
committed global infrastructure projects to over fifteen states that would
subsequently vote in its favor. One high-profile project financed during this
period was the Vau i Dejës Hydroelectric Power Station in northeast Albania.
Albania initially led the sponsorship of the resolution and was a major social-
ist ally and recipient of Chinese development finance during 1960s. The
station, agreed upon in 1967, was commissioned in 1973 and reportedly
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provided more than half of Albania’s electricity at the time.

Similarly, in the years following the resolution, over twenty-five states who
voted in favor of the PRC received global infrastructure. One example is the
Moukoukoulou Dam, a hydroelectric power station China helped the Republic
of Congo build along the Bouenza River beginning in the fall of 1974. It was
officially completed in 1979 and became the country’s largest hydroelectric
power source at the time. Seven states who voted against China also received
global infrastructure. In nearly all cases, these were governments who had
subsequently severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan. One such project was the
aforementioned Moramanga-Andranonampango highway in Madagascar,
which was agreed upon in 1975 after Antananarivo ended its official relations
with Taipei a few years earlier.

47
This of course is not definitive evidence that global infrastructure shaped voting outcomes. It is
simply an illustration of the potential association between voting and infrastructure acquisition
before and after the resolution.
 54 Global China

Prestige projects are also important for China’s elite influence-seeking,

particularly in small states in the Global South such as the aforementioned
examples of Cambodia and Costa Rica. My analysis of several hundred prestige
projects financed by China since the 1950s finds that countries who abandon
diplomatic recognition of Taiwan are disproportionately more likely to acquire
a Chinese-financed prestige project in the following year (Strange 2023b).
Elite influence such as high-level diplomatic support is only one potential
influence outcome that Chinese global infrastructure can produce. The same
projects can provide a myriad of other economic, political, or security benefits
for Chinese official or commercial actors. For example, infrastructure projects
that make use of Chinese industrial inputs produced in excess often mandate
that host countries procure construction materials from Chinese companies.
Chinese SOEs can sometimes enjoy preferential treatment in procurement
processes, particularly in noncompetitive host country industries (e.g. Lim
2014; Ghossein, Hoekman, and Shingal 2018). China’s overseas development
projects can also serve as sites of long-term relational capital building that helps
Chinese commercial actors increase their future investments in developing
countries (Morgan and Zheng 2019).

4.3.3 Global Infrastructure and Popular Influence

Global infrastructure may also be useful for China’s pursuit of popular influence
in developing countries. As mentioned earlier, donors and lenders spend sig-
nificant resources promoting their generosity to accumulate favorable standing
among foreign audiences. On the one hand, global infrastructure may be
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especially well-suited for promoting China’s image as the largest, most visible
projects in China’s overseas development finance portfolio. The Chinese gov-
ernment has a reputation for mobilizing resources and producing large-scale
infrastructure efficiently at home, and has built a parallel reputation in the field
of global development. Rotberg (2009, 75) notes that “High-profile construction
projects, such as building resplendent stadia to house national football teams,”
have been effective at both “sweetening popular perceptions” of China and
cementing relations with African governments “which take credit for having
negotiated China’s contributions to national development – the same efforts that
some African leaders have been unable or unwilling to undertake on their own.”
On the other hand, popular influence depends on the reactions of target
audiences, and not simply the messages that donor or lender governments
hope to convey. Systematic public opinion data toward historical Chinese
development projects is not available. But evidence sourced from around the
world over the first decade of the BRI, if anything, suggests that public attitudes
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 55

toward Chinese global infrastructure are deeply mixed (e.g. Custer et al. 2015;
Lekorwe et al. 2016), and initial academic evidence paints a similar picture.
Table 4 lists several recent studies focused on host country popular attitudes
toward different forms of Chinese development cooperation, primarily its
development finance projects. Overall the results are mixed: Different articles
using different data sources, measures, and study contexts find negative, posi-
tive, or null effects of Chinese development projects on attitudes toward China’s
government. The table also shows that few studies directly investigate percep-
tions of Chinese infrastructure, though several include relevant findings, and
that much of this research has thus far been conducted using surveys adminis-
tered in African countries.
In summary, infrastructure can serve as a deliberate means for China to
pursue elite and popular influence, though there is less evidence of success for
the latter. However, global infrastructure can also generate unforeseen and
potentially unwanted influence consequences that have received comparatively
less attention in earlier research.

4.4 Influence Externalities

Global infrastructure can also activate unintentional influence processes and
outcomes. Unintended consequences have received less popular and scholarly
attention than China’s deliberate influence efforts. Political scientists have long
argued that certain forms of power and influence occur unintentionally (see, for
instance, Barnett and Duvall 2005 and Lukes 2005). This section suggests that
Chinese high-profile infrastructure (and prestige infrastructure, to a lesser extent)
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often produce “influence externalities” for China’s government. Influence exter-

nalities are changes to a state’s international influence that occur unintentionally
and independently of the state’s objectives due to changes in behavior or percep-
tions by foreign state or non-state actors.48 Intuitively, though visibility and
national salience make global infrastructure initially attractive for the host coun-
try government and for China’s government, the same features also create and
amplify unintentional influence consequences.
The suggestion that infrastructure creates unintended consequences is cer-
tainly not new. Research in other fields documents how infrastructure generates
unexpected economic, social, political, and environmental outcomes (e.g. Scott
1998; Li 2007; Guldi 2012). Compared to other development activities, global
infrastructure is uniquely visible and politically salient within host countries,
and these features make it an enticing but risky source of national political

48
This concept is somewhat analogous to security externalities generated from interstate trade
(Gowa and Mansfield 1993).
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Table 4 Selected recent findings on Chinese infrastructure-related flows and popular influence in developing countries

Study Chinese activity Outcome Findings Region Infrastructure-relevant notes

Morgan (2019) Various (exports, Image of China; Mixed; positive Sub-Saharan Aid and infrastructure associated
aid, investment) Evaluation of for aid Africa with positive evaluations
China’s
development
assistance;
Attitudes
toward
China’s
influence
Xu and Zhang Development Evaluation of Positive Sub-Saharan Results strongest for
(2020) projects China’s Africa infrastructure-heavy sectors
development
assistance
Blair, Marty, and Development Attitudes toward Negative Sub-Saharan Results strongest for
Roessler projects China’s Africa infrastructure-heavy sectors
(2022) influence;
belief that
China’s model
is best
Eichenauer et al. Various (exports, Opinion of China Null (but Latin America N/A
(2021) aid, investment) (good or bad) increase in
polarized
attitudes)
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Jones (2021) Development Attitudes toward Negative Sub-Saharan Results strongest for
projects China’s Africa commercially-oriented
influence; projects
belief that
China’s model
is best
Bai, Li, and Development Support for Positive Global Results strongest for
Wang (2022) projects Chinese values infrastructure-oriented projects
Cha, Ryoo, and Development Attitudes toward Mixed; null for Sub-Saharan Exposure to development
Kim (2023) projects and China’s development Africa projects associated with
cultural influence; projects viewing infrastructure
diplomacy belief that investment as contributing to
China’s model China’s positive image
is best
McCauley, Foreign direct Attitudes toward Negative Sub-Saharan Manufacturing projects lead
Pearson, and investment (FDI) China’s Africa respondents to attribute
Wang (2022) projects influence; infrastructure improvements to
belief that China
China’s model
is best
Wellner et al. Development Approval of Positive Global Results strongest for
(Forthcoming) projects China’s concessional and large projects
leadership
 58 Global China

capital. Outsized presence “is why infrastructures are often objects around
which political debates coalesce,” and the grand promises offered by global
infrastructure make these projects “reflexive points where the present state and
future possibilities of government and society are held up for public assess-
ment” (Larkin 2018, 177). Global infrastructure is contentious, and different
local, national, and international actors interpret and contest its multidimen-
sional costs and benefits.49
It is even less controversial to suggest that overseas infrastructure is risky. The
history of infrastructure and global development is replete with examples of
unintended outcomes, including project failures with negative economic and
noneconomic consequences for funders and implementers. In the early twentieth
century, state-encouraged private investments in infrastructure projects across the
Global South by American companies like General Electric often proved volatile
and unprofitable (Wells and Gleason 1995). Global infrastructure has a similarly
controversial track record in postwar international development. For example,
large infrastructure projects financed by the World Bank – now often portrayed as
a bearer of stringent standards that Chinese actors often fail to uphold – have been
prone to corruption, delays, and cost increases (e.g. Bissio 2017). World Bank-
supported infrastructure has historically been vulnerable to political capture in
developing countries (Winters 2014), and this has led to major learnings and
adjustments with regards to project design, bidding, and implementation pro-
cesses (Council on Foreign Relations 2006). The Polonoroeste road project offers
an illustration of how the World Bank has encountered adverse unintended
consequences, including extremely negative publicity, as the result of a high-
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profile project. The road project resulted in significant environmental damage and
fueled corruption in the Amazon, and contributed to the worsening of the World
Bank’s reputation (Wade 2016).
Other major donors and creditors have also encountered negative, unin-
tended consequences stemming from global infrastructure projects. Today
Japanese development finance is often portrayed as a model of high-quality
infrastructure financing and construction. But during the 1980s Japanese
infrastructure contractors became implicated in a major corruption scandal
that embarrassed Japan’s government and led to major policy reforms for
overseas development finance (Hillman 2019b). South Korea’s overseas
infrastructure projects have also become entangled in unexpected controversy.
In 2016 it became publicly known that President Park Geun-hye’s influential
friend and advisor, Choi Soon-sil, was potentially using an ODA-financed
49
Indeed, an entire book has been written in which three authors disagree on the nature and
impacts of Chinese-financed projects in developing countries (Bunkenborg, Nielsen, and
Pederson 2022).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 59

infrastructure project – a convention center in Myanmar – for personal benefit

(Kim 2018). The scandal contributed to widespread negative sentiment
towards Park, who was eventually impeached. Put simply, negative unin-
tended consequences are not a unique challenge for the BRI or Chinese global
infrastructure.
That said, the raw scale of contemporary Chinese global infrastructure far
exceeds that of other major financiers, and influence externalities have occurred
frequently and widely across the BRI during its first decade. In what follows,
I outline two interrelated processes – political mobilization and narratives – that
have frequently coalesced around Chinese global infrastructure projects and
created influence consequences for China’s government. This of course is not
meant as an exhaustive menu for how infrastructure creates unintended out-
comes, but as an illustration of two important processes that complicate the
relationship between infrastructure and influence.50

4.4.1 Host Country Political Mobilization

Global infrastructure projects provide visible symbols around which state or

non-state actors can mobilize to pursue project-specific or grander objectives in
host countries. As mentioned earlier, national leaders are often first movers in
this regard. They request, negotiate, acquire, and brand global infrastructure as
important national projects. But mobilization by other actors has repeatedly
taken both host governments and China’s government by surprise, and in some
cases has impacted China’s foreign policy influence.
Mobilization has often emerged as projects move from negotiations to
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implementation. Infrastructure is often negotiated directly between national-

level governments and thus tends to be relatively insulated from input by local
communities, civil society organizations (CSOs) and nongovernmental organ-
izations (NGOs), opposition parties, and other domestic actors, even in rela-
tively democratic settings (e.g. Flyvbjerg et al. 2003). Chinese high-profile and
prestige infrastructure conforms to this general pattern, and might even magnify
this discord if negotiations with host country governments are highly opaque
and shielded from other domestic and international audiences in ways that allow
host governments to initially avoid accountability and scrutiny.
The first decade of the BRI has shown that initially bypassing domestic
stakeholders can make it more likely that these actors will later mobilize and
disrupt infrastructure projects. Researchers have documented numerous

50
Others have argued, for instance, that Chinese high-profile infrastructure projects can affect
China’s influence in unexpected ways due to each country’s level of patience and availability of
potential alternative options (Oh 2018).
 60 Global China

examples of mobilization around Chinese global infrastructure by local,

regional, or national groups to pursue and defend their interests related to
economic, labor, and environmental issues. Mobilization has emerged through
both bottom-up and top-down processes that have created influence external-
ities for China.
On the one hand, Chinese high-profile infrastructure has generated strong
grassroots reactions among locally affected stakeholders. One prominent recent
example is Kenya’s Lamu Coal Power Plant. After several high-ranking Kenyan
cabinet officials first announced it as a strategic national project, local CSOs
spent several years publicly campaigning against the plant, citing concerns of
pollution and environmental degradation (Kinney 2022). Bottom-up mobiliza-
tion succeeded when the project was cancelled in 2019.51 CSOs and labor
groups in Zambia have similarly found success in mobilizing to oppose poten-
tially problematic Chinese infrastructure projects. This changed international
negotiation dynamics between Zambia and China, potentially affecting China’s
bargaining power and ability to generate elite influence (Leslie 2016).
The suspended Myitsone Dam in Myanmar, which possesses important eco-
nomic and latent geostrategic value for China’s government, is another oft-cited
example of how local stakeholders mobilized in ways that shifted China’s influ-
ence. It was initially negotiated by Myanmar’s military junta beginning in 2006
with little input or opposition allowed by other domestic actors. But after
Myanmar’s temporary democratization in 2011, public mobilization efforts led
by a coalition of conservationists, media figures, CSOs, academics, and activists
popularized an anti-dam campaign citing concerns of socioeconomic disruption to
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communities in Kachin State as well as environmental and social harm along the
Irrawaddy River. Myanmar’s government unilaterally suspended the dam, but
China did not retaliate against Myanmar’s breach of contract. Instead, perceiving
Myanmar’s domestic opposition as credible, China’s government sought to
increase local buy-in to the dam and renegotiate it on more favorable terms to
these affected groups (Chan 2017). The fates of other Chinese high-profile projects
in Myanmar, including the halted China-Myanmar High-Speed Railway, similarly
suggest that host country mobilization can circumscribe China’s ability to shape
government-to-government negotiations (Chan 2020). China’s popular influence
in host countries can also increase or decrease as a result of domestic mobilizations,
which might further constrain its influence over future negotiations for other
projects or bilateral issues.
Mobilization around Chinese global infrastructure can also operate through high-
level actors who engage with domestic public audiences. This infamously occurred

51
www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48771519.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 61

in 2018 when Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, elected again as

prime minister after serving decades earlier, cancelled over $20 billion in Chinese
high-profile infrastructure projects signed by his predecessor, Najib Razak. Multiple
high-profile projects became embroiled in highly public corruption scandals and
amid mounting debt to China. These included the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL,
pictured in Figure 10) and Bandar Malaysia, a mixed development housing project
in Kuala Lumpur (Liu and Lim 2019).
The ECRL illustrates how high-level political actors in host countries can
produce influence externalities for China. The railway was envisioned by
Malaysian and Chinese leaders as a flagship national project. At the time of
negotiation, the Razak-led Malaysian government viewed the ECRL as
a landmark project that could stimulate growth and reduce inequality between
Malaysia’s politically important but economically underdeveloped east coast
states and the more prosperous Selangor state. For China, in addition to the
project’s commercial value, the rail would also deliver geostrategic benefits as
an alternate transportation corridor to the Strait of Malacca (Lim, Li, and Ji
2022). However, opposition groups led by Mahathir attacked the ECRL and
other Chinese high-profile infrastructure on the basis of their opaqueness and
lack of competitive tenders for construction. Upon entering office for a second
time as prime minister, Mahathir infamously deferred the ECRL during a 2018
trip to Beijing. Less than a year later, he renegotiated the ECRL on more
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Figure 10 East coast rail link (东海岸衔接铁道)

Source: Xinhua.
 62 Global China

favorable terms and at a lower cost to Malaysia (Lim, Li, and Ji 2022). The
railway is currently under construction.
Over 1,500 km south of Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia offers another example in
which a Chinese-supported high-speed rail project has threatened to destabilize
China’s popular and elite influence. Domestic debates in Indonesia involving
Chinese global infrastructure, particularly the recently completed Jakarta–
Bandung High Speed Rail (雅万高铁) on the island of Java, have provided
important political fodder for Indonesian politicians. Indonesia’s leadership has
effectively wielded growing popular frustration toward China generally in
recent years, some of which stems from the unpopularity of expensive, contro-
versial projects such as the aforementioned high-speed rail link and the
Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, to increase their bargaining power in
negotiations with China for future infrastructure projects (Tritto 2020; Camba
2020).
As these brief examples show, global infrastructure provides visible touchpoints
for both grassroots and high-level mobilization. In each of these cases, China’s
government encountered potential influence externalities, primarily in the form of
challenges to its ability to negotiate bilaterally, its popular influence in host coun-
tries, and the interaction between these elite and popular influence dynamics.
Mobilization can also directly affect China’s influence when individual projects
designed to achieve important economic or political objectives for China have been
halted, cancelled, or scaled back because of political mobilization. China’s negoti-
ating position for ongoing and planned infrastructure has shifted – and sometimes
worsened – relative to counterpart governments whose hands can become credibly
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tied by domestic audiences. Beyond the aforementioned examples of Indonesia and

Myanmar, this has also recently occurred in BRI host countries such as Sri Lanka,
Maldives, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya, to name a few.
Available examples suggest that host country mobilization has more often
curtailed rather than expanded China’s influence. Two caveats are in order,
however. First, in some contexts, mobilization dynamics are weaker and appear
less threatening to China’s interests. In several Central Asian countries, including
Kazakhstan, for example, despite souring popular sentiment toward Chinese-
financed high-profile infrastructure, there is comparatively less evidence that
China’s influence has diminished. One factor that may help explain this outcome
is China’s successful co-optation of local and regional politicians in these coun-
tries (Kazantsev, Medvedeva, and Safranchuk 2021; Umarov 2021).
Second, political mobilization is not always based on negative sentiment
toward Chinese global infrastructure. In fact, despite strongly negative inter-
national rhetoric toward the BRI – particularly in the United States and other
Western democracies – elite and popular attitudes in dozens of BRI host
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 63

countries are considerably more mixed (see 4.3.3). Concerns about debt
sustainability, transparency, and accountability notwithstanding, China’s spe-
cialization in global infrastructure still appears welcome among many audi-
ences in developing countries. Both materially and reputationally, China’s
government now has a comparative advantage relative to other foreign finan-
ciers in building global infrastructure. Cross-national survey evidence shows
that officials in African countries tend to view China’s government positively
in terms of its swift decision-making, project implementation speed, and
reluctance to meddle in other state affairs (Shikwati, Adero, and Juma
2022).52 While troubled BRI projects attract the bulk of mainstream media
attention, as highlighted in Section 3, a significant portion of China’s high-
profile infrastructure is actually completed ahead of schedule and in some
cases has helped relieve infrastructure bottlenecks in host countries (e.g.
Bräutigam 2019b; Bluhm et al. 2021; Malik et al. 2021).
Host country politicians sometimes highlight these advantages when mobiliz-
ing in favor of Chinese global infrastructure. Politicians regularly point domestic
audiences to visible projects, particularly completed ones. Former Zambian
President Edgar Lungu did this during his failed re-election bid in 2020, unveiling
a newly built, Chinese-financed hydropower station and two airports just weeks
before national elections.53 During Sierra Leone’s 2018 general elections, the
incumbent All People’s Congress prominently (and ultimately unsuccessfully)
highlighted its close relations with China on the campaign trail (Rinck 2019). This
was after a decade of Chinese global infrastructure and other development
financing in the country, including a promised high-profile airport project that
failed to materialize under former president Ernest Bai Koroma.54
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4.4.2 Narratives

Mobilization is closely related to another process that can unintentionally alter

China’s influence: the creation and proliferation of infrastructure-related narra-
tives. Narratives can accelerate political mobilization at local, national, or
international levels, and amplify resulting influence consequences for China’s
government. Narratives are a basic feature of political discourse in both official

52
China is also seen as more likely to use corruption to grease the wheels of commerce, less likely
to provide high-quality products, and less likely to drive local job creation compared to the
European Union.
53
https://chinaglobalsouth.com/2021/08/05/one-week-to-go-before-the-zambian-elections-and-
president-lungu-leans-hard-on-chinese-built-infrastructure/.
54
After former President Ernest Bai Koroma signed a loan agreement prior to the national election,
the new administration cancelled the deal in 2018. See “Mamamah airport: Sierra Leone cancels
China-funded project,” BBC, October 10, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-
45809810.
 64 Global China

news and everyday conversations both offline and on the internet and social
media platforms. Researchers have long suggested that narratives, defined most
simply as “the stories people tell,” shape political attitudes and behavior
(Patterson and Monroe 1998).55 They play a cognitive role in helping people
“make sense of our place in the world” and understand complex issues in
everyday life (Patterson and Monroe 1998, 319).56 Narratives “establish the
common-sense givens of debate, set the boundaries of the legitimate, limit what
political actors inside and outside the halls of power can publicly justify, and
resist efforts to remake the landscape of legitimation” (Krebs 2015, 3).
Narratives are important in the context of global infrastructure because they
offer a way for people to simplify and make sense of operationally and finan-
cially complicated projects. Infrastructure narratives can also serve as vehicles
for transmitting or even constituting political symbols, or “schemata that indi-
viduals use to simplify a complex world” among elite and popular audiences
(Schatz 2021, 6). Political messages that global infrastructure come to represent
are shared among individuals in society and can become resources around
which actors mobilize. These features make narratives important mediums of
contestation in local, national, and international politics alongside the actual
infrastructure projects they describe. Infrastructure narratives are thus critical
for donors’ and lenders’ pursuit of elite and popular influence.
Narratives about global infrastructure projects have produced unintended
consequences for China’s influence. Some of these narratives exist locally and
pertain to projects in a single community or region. Others have emerged and
spread at scale, becoming national or international topics of discussion that
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permeate high-level political discourse. In international relations, most of the

cases we observe and focus on are the latter: simplistic narratives that have gained
traction and affected China’s negotiations with other countries as well as Beijing’s
international reputation. Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port and its central role in the
“debt-trap diplomacy” narrative – in which China’s government lures developing
country governments into heavy debt burdens in order to extract strategic bene-
fits – is the best-known example. But other recent instances, including high-
profile infrastructure in Kenya and Malaysia, have also demonstrated how project
narratives can proliferate at local, national, and international levels (Bräutigam
2020; Hameiri and Jones 2020; Bräutigam et al. 2023).

55
Bruner (1990, 90) defines a narrative as a “unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings
involving human beings as characters or actors” that is often dramatic and can be effective
regardless of its empirical accuracy. Narratives are also described as devices to help people make
sense of a perceived problem or irregularity (Patterson and Monroe 1998).
56
As such, narratives, by definition, are subjective and conditioned on what is valued within
a social and cultural context.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 65

Two additional features of Chinese global infrastructure – the complex

relationship between Chinese state and non-state actors, and the diverse set of
Chinese actors operating in developing countries – have affected local, national,
and international infrastructure narratives. The first relates to a separate,
longstanding principal-agent problem in the context of Chinese global eco-
nomic engagement that can also fuel the spread of problematic narratives for
China. Delegation of strategic responsibilities to quasi- or non-state agents
that behave based on their own interests, such as profit-oriented firms operat-
ing overseas, has been a consistent challenge for China’s government during
its global infrastructure drive (Gill and Reilly 2007; Shi 2015; Norris 2016).
When these actors behave in ways that stray from China’s officially stated
interests, this can create new or contribute to existing narratives about
Chinese infrastructure.
Across all of China’s engagements with developing countries, this principal-
agent problem is arguably most severe for large, complex infrastructure projects.
Thousands of Chinese state-owned and private companies act as contractors and
stakeholders for many of China’s high-profile infrastructure projects abroad, and
the profit-oriented interests of these actors often do not perfectly align with the
interests and intentions of the Chinese state (Sun, Jayaram, and Kassiri 2017;
Leutert 2019). The limited ability of China’s government to control Chinese
commercial actors with global operations further constrains its ability to prevent
or manage resulting infrastructure narratives. For example, profit-motivated
Chinese SOEs, and especially their local subsidiaries operating in host countries
such as Papua New Guinea, can coordinate with host country governments to plan
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and request infrastructure projects from China’s government (Zhang and Smith
2017).57 Sometimes these projects are based on relatively narrow self-interest
rather than host country need or economic feasibility, and are not projects that
China’s government would otherwise finance.58 The same projects may include
inflated price tags that foster corruption and waste as a result of this coordination.
Negative economic or social effects produced as a result can feed into broader
narratives that portray China’s government as a self-interested, profit-seeking
actor rather than a benevolent development partner.

57
In the context of Chinese overseas investments, local Chinese diaspora communities who
develop reputations as trustworthy partners for official Chinese actors but pursue their own
commercial interests are another potential source of principal-agent problems (Chen 2022).
58
When Chinese companies with local contextual knowledge and connections are involved
with identifying and proposing projects, they may not have incentives to adequately price
project risk into proposals, which could lead to suboptimal project selection. In contrast,
Chinese policy banks have limited capacity for accurately factoring in risks that arise from
local context and need to rely on companies with local operations and presence (Zhang 2020;
Patey 2021).
 66 Global China

Second, infrastructure narratives are constructed from a wide range of infor-

mational inputs from state and non-state actors within and outside host coun-
tries. As mentioned earlier, narratives change the information environment and
structure available choices for governments and other actors, but their emer-
gence and spread also depends on whether the information they contain is easily
understood and consumed by different audiences (e.g. Breuer and Johnston
2019). Creators and distributors of infrastructure narratives simplify extremely
financially and operationally complex global infrastructure projects into access-
ible stories that can be digested by large audiences. In this process of distillation,
whether on purpose or accidentally, host country and other actors – whether
government bureaucrats, opposition politicians, media organizations, or mem-
bers of the general public – can easily create misinformation (or disinforma-
tion). This in turn can have consequences for China’s elite or popular influence,
particularly when narratives accelerate host country mobilization.
For example, misattribution of the behavior or identities of quasi- or non-state
actors is particularly common in the context of Chinese global infrastructure.
Chinese global infrastructure is not provided by a monolithic state but by
a complex set of state and quasi-state actors including the central government,
various ministries, agencies, and commissions, provincial governments, policy
and commercial banks, SOEs, local subsidiaries of Chinese companies, and
Chinese managers and workers. Moreover, these infrastructure stakeholders
often operate and coexist alongside a diverse set of non-state Chinese actors in
many of the same communities in developing countries. For example, in Africa
alone, “Chinese investors, shopkeepers, and migrant laborers in Africa are esti-
mated at more than one million people” (Siu and McGovern 2017).59 Large,
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diverse populations of overseas Chinese further add to the tapestry of Chinese

non-state actors operating in host countries in close proximity to high-profile
infrastructure projects (Nyíri and Tan 2017, 16–17). Host-country actors – from
ordinary citizens to high-level officials – can accidentally or purposefully misun-
derstand the nature of China’s behavior or misattribute credit or blame to the
Chinese government when learning of project successes or failures (e.g.
Bräutigam et al. 2022). For example, Peruvians often view both private and state-
owned Chinese mining companies operating in their country as being tied to
China’s government regardless of a company’s actual identity (Ratigan 2021).
Of course, misattribution does not only arise in the context of Chinese global
infrastructure; donors and lenders routinely face limitations of effectively
conveying information about their overseas development projects to foreign
59
Non-state Chinese commercial actors such as petty traders do not simply integrate seamlessly
into local societies but operate in complex local environments with preexisting social realities
(e.g. Sheridan 2022).
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 67

populations. But it seems particularly prevalent for Chinese high-profile infra-

structure given these projects’ scale, complexity, and coexistence alongside
a mosaic of other Chinese state and non-state activities in developing countries.
The lack of transparency and disclosure regarding many of China’s global high-
profile infrastructure projects may further compound this issue.
Importantly, infrastructure-related narratives that are crafted, repackaged,
and disseminated by state and non-state actors within and beyond host countries
are largely beyond the control of China’s government. Many of the sources that
contribute to local, national, and global narratives about Chinese infrastructure
come from non-Chinese actors. Chinese state actors’ viewpoints are inserted
into public discourse via media and social media channels, but represent only
one input into the production of infrastructure narratives. Misattribution or other
informational deficiencies can feed into local or national narratives about
China’s global infrastructure projects and amplify influence consequences
China’s government beyond local project sites.
Viewed from this angle, China’s contemporary global infrastructure drive is
remarkable in the context of a rising China’s pursuit of international influence.
Over the past decade, the Chinese government has embarked on a major public
diplomacy campaign abroad to shore up its global reputation and “tell China’s
story well” (Caixin 2015). In pursuit of this objective, it has invested billions
of dollars in media, social media, storytelling, and cultural exchanges with
developing countries that host high-profile infrastructure projects (Brazys and
Dukalskis 2019; Benabdallah 2021). But China’s efforts to infuse its official
perspectives into local discourses outside of China appear to have little sway
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regarding overall narratives about high-profile infrastructure, which are

embedded in local contexts and tied to specific local grievances and stylized
interpretations. The fate of infrastructure narratives instead rests more heavily
on a complex set of domestic and international actors, and narrative entrepre-
neurs who play an outsized role in creating and spreading narratives
(Hagstrom and Gustafsson 2019) Global infrastructure, put simply, is a vola-
tile tool for popular influence seeking.
In summary, global infrastructure creates influence externalities for China’s
government. These unintended consequences are an important addendum to
earlier accounts that assert China’s influence is linearly increasing with its global
infrastructure provision. Influence is a net concept that can be gained or lost and
decomposed into different layers such as elite and popular outcomes. Many recent
examples along the BRI suggest that influence externalities have mostly been
negative for China’s government in recent years. Host country public reactions to
Chinese development activities can produce bottom-up pressures that jeopardize
project completion or China’s broader strategic interests in a given country or
 68 Global China

region. Alternatively, opposition politicians in host countries can seize on dis-

tressed projects as useful sources of political capital, and not necessarily in ways
that help China’s influence objectives. Indeed, across the BRI, Chinese-financed
projects have occasionally been suspended, mothballed, or cancelled in the face
of pressure on host country governments applied by local residents, civil society
organizations, and local and national politicians. These mobilizations also depend
heavily on infrastructure narratives that, regardless of their empirical veracity or
precision, allow local, national, and international audiences to make sense of
Chinese global infrastructure. Narratives also provide a political tool for state and
non-state actors who, in many cases, utilize narratives about Chinese infrastruc-
ture to advance their agendas in ways that affect China’s economic or political
influence at elite and popular levels. These processes show that China’s govern-
ment has considerably less control over infrastructure-related influence processes
and outcomes than other accounts imply.

5 The Past, Present, and Future of Chinese

Global Infrastructure
Global infrastructure is one of the defining markers of a more active Chinese
foreign policy in recent years. Hundreds of roadways, bridges, railways, airports,
harbors, power plants, and factories, along with stadiums, government complexes,
and event venues, are among the most prominent symbols of China’s presence in
the Global South. Within the field of international development, infrastructure is
firmly embedded within China’s identity as a donor and lender, reflected both
through its bilateral global infrastructure projects and its establishment of the AIIB,
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an explicitly infrastructure-focused multilateral development bank.

However, as the preceding sections demonstrate, Chinese global infrastructure
is not a twenty-first-century phenomenon, much less a product of the BRI. Five
years into the BRI and shortly after the AIIB was established, the Economist
(2017) wrote that “China seems to be repeating many of the mistakes made by
Western donors and investors in the 1970s” in financing big-ticket infrastructure.
This may be true in the sense that risk assessments and economic returns of
Chinese global infrastructure are inadequate and uncertain, as was often the case
with other lenders’ infrastructure development projects. But it neglects that
China’s global infrastructure lineage predates the 1970s and that China’s govern-
ment has financed and built hundreds of global infrastructure projects in Asia,
Africa, and elsewhere across diverse periods of Chinese politics.
Many of China’s twenty-first-century global infrastructure projects have encoun-
tered stiff local, national, and international criticism, but this is not very surprising
when placed in comparative context. Large infrastructure has often performed
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 69

poorly in terms of speed, efficiency, accountability and corruption control, and net
economic benefits. China’s state-led approach to global infrastructure has clearly
not been immune to these general patterns, neither historically nor in the current era,
and certain elements of China’s approach may even make negative results more
likely. For example, opaque lending terms, inadequate pre-project assessments and
safeguards, and direct negotiations with national politicians that can sideline critical
voices have all been features, not bugs, within many of China’s global infrastructure
projects. Still, context is important, and economic problems stemming from these
issues are not nearly as distinctive to Chinese global infrastructure as many popular
accounts focused only on the BRI might suggest.
However, though economic risks of Chinese infrastructure projects are not
unique, both the sheer scale of China’s post-2000 global infrastructure spree and
its historical commitment to global infrastructure since 1949 are remarkable.
Hundreds of Chinese global infrastructure projects have injected significant
political risk that seriously affects China’s pursuit of influence. On balance, it
appears that global infrastructure has been a useful tool for pursuing elite
influence in developing countries via host country governments. In contrast,
global infrastructure’s effects on China’s popular influence, as well as China’s
long-term net influence, are much less certain.
Global infrastructure’s political risks are nonlinear and depend heavily on on-the-
ground factors beyond China’s control. Chinese global infrastructure has repeat-
edly encountered contentious domestic mobilization in host countries, often by
individuals and groups initially left out of project negotiations. Disruptions caused
by mobilization have in some cases altered China’s policy interests at the project or
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national level. They have also affected China’s elite and popular influence in
developing countries and potentially its international reputation writ large.
Infrastructure narratives have accelerated political mobilization in some
cases. Narratives are sometimes contained locally, while other times they spread
beyond regional and national borders. Deviations from state goals by Chinese
project implementers as well as accidental or purposeful information failures
about different Chinese actors can further fuel problematic narratives about
Chinese global infrastructure. Collectively, these processes have generated
influence externalities beyond China’s grasp that modulate – and often imperil –
its foreign policy influence in unexpected ways.
Despite this political volatility, the initial political attraction of these ventures
for host country governments and the Chinese government is an important
reason for their long-term persistence. High-profile and prestige infrastructure
have served as valuable forms of political capital given their high visibility and
national salience. These features allow global infrastructure projects to perform
a host of material and symbolic political functions that other development
 70 Global China

projects cannot. This makes them useful for host country governments seeking
greater political authority at home but unable to fund such projects internally, as
well as for the Chinese government’s pursuit of international influence.
This Element complements a growing body of research on Chinese development
finance heavily fixated on the BRI and financial flows (e.g. Hurley, Morris, and
Portelance 2019; Bräutigam 2020; Gelpern et al. 2022; Bräutigam 2022; Horn et al.
2023). Researchers are concerned with Chinese development financial flows for
good reason. China’s post-2000 global infrastructure drive significantly increased
public debt stocks owed to Chinese banks in many developing countries. It has also
positioned China’s government as one of the most pivotal players in evolving
multilateral debt negotiations (Bräutigam 2023). Currently there are also major
questions about the future availability of Chinese global infrastructure finance
given China’s gradually slowing economy, a host of problematic BRI projects
and debt-distressed host country governments, and highly publicized BRI “back-
lash” in many host countries. Chinese development lending declined sharply before
the onset of the pandemic, and it is still unclear to what extent China’s government
will revive global infrastructure lending in the coming years (Mingey and Kratz
2021; Ray 2023). Citing these trends, along with Chinese bailouts of distressed host
governments, some observers appear ready to eulogize the BRI.60 Others, including
China’s government, are instead looking to a “recalibrated” BRI featuring more
effective risk assessment and a “small is beautiful” (小而美) mentality to project
finance.61
These are important, future-oriented questions for international relations and
development. However, the evidence in this Element suggests that incorporat-
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ing historical and comparative context allows us to more fully grasp Chinese
global infrastructure’s historical pedigree and political logics, in addition to its
well-known contemporary economic motives and impacts. Chinese global
infrastructure’s political contours are just as consequential for understanding
the persistence of this project class since 1949.
This approach suggests that eulogizing the BRI would not only be premature
but also missing the forest for the trees. Many of the contemporary economic
objectives as well as the longstanding political rationales that motivate Chinese
global infrastructure are arguably still in place.
Economically, the BRI is aimed at serving a suite of national economic goals
discussed in Section 2. Some of China’s own domestic economic problems
which have grown more acute in recent years – such as the lack of demand for
domestic construction projects despite consistent investment stimulus by

60
www.ft.com/content/9b2cb53f-e6f0-479e-bb94-a2e0c8680e88.
61
www.yidaiyilu.gov.cn/xwzx/bwdt/308507.htm.
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 71

China’s government – may provide continued emphasis on using overseas

infrastructure to offload excess capacity and search for profitable investments.62
Politically, global infrastructure remains a distinct component of donor and
lender toolkits for pursuing influence given its visibility and national presence.
For the Chinese government in particular, both its long global infrastructure
pedigree and more recent initiatives, such as the creation of the multilateral
AIIB, have firmly entrenched infrastructure as China’s perceived comparative
advantage in global development – with reputational benefits and liabilities –
relative to other major donors and lenders. It is unclear why the Chinese govern-
ment would wish to relinquish this reputational cornerstone given its own con-
viction in the merits of infrastructure-led development and the influence potential
of these projects, significant economic and political risks notwithstanding.
Moreover, Chinese global infrastructure is not a stranger to outside criticism,
and some of its most major twentieth-century projects encountered elite and
popular criticism within and outside host countries (e.g. Monson 2009, 148). The
resilience of this project class despite external criticism and internal shifts in
China’s global development strategy suggests that global infrastructure will con-
tinue to feature prominently in China’s development finance, even as the Chinese
government has recently rhetorically eschewed “vanity projects” (面子工程) and
advocated for “high-quality development” (高质量发展) activities along the BRI
(Reuters Staff 2018; Xinhua 2021).
Escaping recency bias and viewing the BRI from a more wholistic perspec-
tive thus suggests that Chinese global infrastructure is here to stay. Initial
outcomes of the recently concluded third Belt and Road Forum for
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International Cooperation, marking the 10th anniversary of the BRI, support

this assertion. Xi Jinping’s speech at the forum emphasized eight planned steps
to support a high-quality BRI, and global infrastructure features prominently in
several of them (Xinhua 2023). In the State Council’s accompanying white
paper, global infrastructures and infrastructure connectivity continue to feature
as central pillars of China's approach (State Council 2023).
Of course, this is not to suggest that Chinese global infrastructure is static. The
first decade of the BRI offered important lessons for China’s government, which
appears to have entered into a period of recalibration as it attempts to better grasp
the economic and noneconomic risks of global infrastructure projects, including
those related to influence externalities. One potential future outcome is
a recalibrated BRI in which project planners from China and in host countries
have stronger incentives to gather input from communities and domestic actors to

62
It is also possible that additional policy goals, such as Renminbi internationalization, could serve
as additional impetus for Chinese global infrastructure activity in the Global South.
 72 Global China

achieve greater levels of pre-project buy-in by paying more attention to the

socioeconomic and environmental costs created by high-profile infrastructure.
A greater degree of infrastructure cofinancing by Chinese and non-Chinese
official and commercial actors, including the AIIB and peer multilateral institu-
tions, could also help improve project selection, financing, and implementation.
New forms of infrastructure are also increasingly appearing alongside “trad-
itional” infrastructure. Digital and green projects appear set to occupy a greater
space in the future of Chinese global infrastructure. The Digital Silk Road (DSR)
was announced in 2015 and promotes international connectivity via digital infra-
structure along the BRI. During a speech at the Belt and Road Forum in 2017, Xi
Jinping promoted a “digital silk road” (数字丝绸之路) of connected technologies
in the fields of digital economy, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and quan-
tum computing (Xinhua 2017). Like China’s physical global infrastructure, digital
projects are motivated by an analogous combination of commercial and political
factors (Triolo et al. 2020; Hillman 2021). At the same time, the DSR and digital
infrastructures more generally have raised international concerns about exports of
digital surveillance technology to developing countries (Greitens 2020).
During the same speech, Xi emphasized the importance of a second form of
emerging global infrastructure: green, low-carbon, and sustainable development
concepts. China’s government has since continued to promote environmental
sustainability along the BRI through a series of speeches, initiatives, and institu-
tions. In a September 2021 speech addressed to the UNGA, Xi pledged that China
would stop financing coal-fired power plants abroad. During the same speech, Xi
introduced the “Global Development Initiative” (全球发展倡议) and empha-
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sized the need for environmentally sustainable growth. In practice, evidence

suggests that while China’s government is taking steps to reduce the carbon
footprint of BRI infrastructure, these efforts are highly uneven across host
countries thus far (e.g. Harlan 2021).
In contrast, other major donors and creditors have not featured global infra-
structure as centrally as China either rhetorically or in practice. Nor have they
integrated their own development approaches with those of developing coun-
tries in the way that China’s government has. Western development agencies
drastically curtailed infrastructure investments in recent decades in hopes that
the private sector would fill the infrastructure financing gap and because of
concerns about corruption (e.g. Dollar 2008). Recent multilateral responses to
the BRI, such as PGII or the Global Gateway, suggest that the reemergence of
Chinese global infrastructure might galvanize these “traditional” donors and
creditors to reverse course and significantly increase their provision of infra-
structure to developing countries. But such initiatives face serious questions
about scale and coordination, and it is unclear whether and the extent to which
 Chinese Global Infrastructure 73

they will materialize (Lu and Myxter-lino 2021). If they do, these providers of
development capital will also face complex economic and political conse-
quences resulting from unexpected infrastructure trajectories, often involving
mobilization and narratives, described earlier.
To summarize, Chinese global infrastructure is an older and more persistent
phenomenon than popular accounts suggest. Historical and global context dem-
onstrates that the BRI and contemporary Chinese global infrastructure are chap-
ters in a larger story of infrastructure, development, and influence in world
politics. In this vein, this Element also speaks to a new, broader agenda challen-
ging “methodological nationalism” and the tendency to separate China from the
world in analyzing its global connections (Franceschini and Loubere 2022, 37–
38). Research that applies contexts and general concepts from other fields can
improve our understanding of China’s role in the world, and also potentially help
refine these concepts themselves. For example, as argued in Section 4, evidence
on Chinese global infrastructure suggests that earlier, straightforward approaches
to studying China’s influence were useful departure points but that more inclusive
approaches may be needed to capture previously underappreciated, incidental
influence processes that stem from infrastructure projects.
Future researchers can further refine and improve our understanding of the
aims and effects of Chinese and other global infrastructures.63 This Element
defines Chinese global infrastructure and outlines two important project classes,
high-profile and prestige projects. It exhaustively catalogues China’s global
infrastructure portfolio since 1949 and innovates on earlier datasets and research
by directly collecting data on and measuring Chinese global infrastructure. Future
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studies can build on this initial progress by making use of the latest datasets, such
as AidData’s Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset, 3.0 (Custer et al.
2023), to track whether and how the composition of Chinese global infrastructure
is shifting into digital and other forms. It also charts multiple inroads to China’s
infrastructure-influence nexus that could be more systematically unpacked. For
instance, future research could more rigorously isolate and study the various
influence pathways discussed earlier using a variety of approaches, from carefully
designed survey experiments to in-country fieldwork. Finally, as digital global
infrastructures become increasingly central components of China’s global eco-
nomic engagement, researchers can help further unpack how these projects
generate similar or different influence processes than those outlined earlier.

63
Future research could, for example, develop a systematic framework for evaluating the eco-
nomic, political, and other returns of global infrastructure projects over longer periods of time.
Researchers could also more rigorously comparatively assess the performance of Chinese global
infrastructure relative to other infrastructure providers.
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 Acknowledgments
The University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council
(#27602621), and the Wilson Center provided generous research support for
this Element. James Bedford, Tsz Him Chan, Hoi Ying Cheng, Ziqi Ding,
Songtao Duan, Yu Han, Boyung Kim, Wing Hei Lam, Tsz Shan Lau,
Dongxiao Li, Jiali Luo, Ho Yin Ma, Dilang Mo, Guanzheng Sun, Oi Ling
Szeto, Yue Tang, Shihan Wang, Amy Wu, Yanyan Wu, Hanxiong Yan, Aozuo
Zheng, Haoning Zheng, and Xinman Zou provided valuable research assist-
ance. Thank you to two anonymous reviewers and Chris Carothers, as well as
audiences at the Cornell University Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict
Studies, Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies Critical
Issues Confronting China Series, and Lingnan University International
Symposium on “Africa-China Relations in an Era of Uncertain Future” for
feedback on earlier drafts. Thank you to Ching Kwan Lee for excellent editorial
guidance. Finally, I dedicate this book to Jingwen Sun for her unwavering
support and encouragement.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press
 Global China

Ching Kwan Lee

University of California-Los Angeles
Ching Kwan Lee is professor of sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles. Her
scholarly interests include political sociology, popular protests, labor, development, polit-
ical economy, comparative ethnography, China, Hong Kong, East Asia and the Global South.
She is the author of three multiple award-winning monographs on contemporary China:
Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women (1998), Against the
Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (2007), and The Specter of Global China:
Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (2017). Her co-edited volumes include Take
Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement (2019) and The
Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View (2019).

About the Series

The Cambridge Elements series Global China showcases thematic, region- or country-
specific studies on China’s multifaceted global engagements and impacts. Each title,
written by a leading scholar of the subject matter at hand, combines a succinct, com-
prehensive and up-to-date overview of the debates in the scholarly literature with
original analysis and a clear argument. Featuring cutting edge scholarship on arguably
one of the most important and controversial developments in the 21st century, the
Global China Elements series will advance a new direction of China scholarship that
expands China Studies beyond China’s territorial boundaries.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press
 Global China

Elements in the Series

Chinese Soft Power
Maria Repnikova
The Hong Kong-China Nexus
John Carroll
Clash of Empires
Ho-fung Hung
Global China as Method
Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere
Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier
Ching Kwan Lee
China and Global Food Security
Shaohua Zhan
China in Global Health: Past and Present
Mary Augusta Brazelton
Chinese Global Infrastructure
Austin Strange

A full series listing is available at: www.cambridge.org/EGLC

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090902 Published online by Cambridge University Press