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 (Reference WoodsWoods 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, particularly after the Sino-Soviet Split, when Mao adopted an extremely activist, revolutionary foreign policy orientation (Reference YuYu 1977; Reference Alden and AlvesAlden and Alves 2008; Reference BrazinskyBrazinsky 2017; Reference Cheng and TaylorCheng and Taylor 2017; Reference EisenmanEisenman 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 (Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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 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 (Reference KobayashiKobayashi 2008; Chin 2012).Footnote ⁹

These shifts are important for understanding the origins of China’s contemporary global infrastructure drive. In particular, important policy changes during 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 purposes. 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 financing infrastructure projects in China (Reference BräutigamBräutigam 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 (Reference Zhang and SmithZhang 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 consequences 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 development projects. China’s government also adopted a Contract Responsibility 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 (Reference Cheng and TaylorCheng 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 government 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 (Reference ZhangZhang 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 (Reference Sanderson and ForsytheSanderson and Forsythe 2013). After their formation, Eximbank and CDB also began serving as the major financial vehicles through which China’s government provided capital for infrastructure projects 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 infrastructure 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 countries. 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 industrial inputs produced in excess; creating globally competitive, national champion firms; enhancing China’s energy security; and attempting to wean China’s own economy off of infrastructure investment (e.g. State Council 2013; Reference Kong and GallagherKong and Gallagher 2017; Reference MinYe 2020; Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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 (Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher et al. 2022). China still remained an important aid donor during this transformation, and its provision of smaller, highly concessional foreign aid projects in agriculture, education, health, and various social sectors has also increased significantly 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 commercial 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 (Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher et al. 2022, 105). In contrast, from 2013 to 2017, it committed just 11 cents of aid for each dollar of lending (Reference Malik, Parks and RussellMalik et al. 2021).

This evolution has arguably made it more difficult for the Chinese government 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 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 significantly 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. Reference Gill and ReillyGill and Reilly 2007; Reference CorkinCorkin 2011).

Chinese SOEs serving as contractors and in other roles have become especially important infrastructure actors on the ground. They possess the expertise needed to build large-scale infrastructure projects in diverse foreign environments 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 (Reference Huang and ChenHuang 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 infrastructure loans backed by Chinese policy banks, which impacts both the national and subnational allocation of projects (Reference Zhang and SmithZhang and Smith 2017).Footnote ¹⁰ 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” (Reference LeutertLeutert 2019; Reference ZhangZhang 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 (Reference RudyakRudyak 2019a). But CIDCA’s vice-ministerial rank may circumscribe its relative authority, and thus far it remains unclear whether and the extent to which CIDCA or other new institutions 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, especially when implementing large, complex infrastructure projects (Reference Zhao and JingZhao 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 growing 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.

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 government 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 informational 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 subsequent sections, this Element employs two recently published datasets to study China’s provision of infrastructure projects since 1949.Footnote ¹⁴

The first dataset is AidData’s Chinese Official Finance Dataset, Version 2.0 (Reference Custer, Dreher and ElstonCuster et al. 2021; Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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) (Reference Custer, Dreher and ElstonCuster et al. 2023). Social scientists routinely use this database 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 development finance between 2000 and 2017, and the recently-released 3.0 version extends data coverage through 2021.

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 development 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, various 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 twentieth-century Chinese global development activities (e.g. Reference HorvathHorvath 1976; Reference LawLaw 1984; Reference BartkeBartke 1989; Reference LinLin 1993; Reference Morgan and ZhengMorgan and Zheng 2019).Footnote 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 development, 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.Footnote ¹⁶ The historical dataset includes nearly 4,000 Chinese-financed development project 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 contributions 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.

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 infrastructure-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.Footnote 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.

3.1 Chinese and International Perspectives

China’s overseas infrastructure is loosely defined concept without clear boundaries. 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 and meeting venues are among the most common types of Chinese infrastructure development projects. In addition, Chinese overseas infrastructure includes a growing portfolio of “digital infrastructure” such as wireless networks, artificial intelligence, smart cities and digital surveillance technologies, nanotechnology, and quantum computing projects (Reference XinhuaXinhua 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, however, 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 socioeconomic 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 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:

The Chinese government has continuously doubled down on this sentiment. At the third symposium on Belt and Road development in 2021, Xi emphasized that infrastructure is important for building “hard connectivity” (硬联通) along the BRI (Reference JinpingXi 2021).Footnote ¹⁸ The State Council’s 2021 white paper on “International Development Cooperation in the New Era” also emphasized the role of infrastructure 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 infrastructure 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 bottlenecks 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. Reference Lin and WangLin and Wang 2017). In short, from the perspective of China’s government and other observers, global infrastructure is a defining feature of Chinese international development 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 facilitated its own growth in the past decades” (Reference Yeh and WhartonYeh and Wharton 2016; Reference ChenChen 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 (Reference WangWang 2017; Reference WahbaWahba 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 (Reference Roberts, Deichmann, Fingleton and ShiRoberts et al. 2012; Reference Nathaniel, Brandt, Vernon Henderson, Turner and ZhangBaum-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 (Reference XiaoMa 2022, 2).Footnote 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.Footnote ²⁰

A third perspective held by some within and outside of China parallels international debates discussed in Section 1: The potential for overseas infrastructure 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 Reference MinYe (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 infrastructure 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 small and medium-sized projects in other countries (Reference BoardEditorial Board 2008, 322; Reference MonsonMonson 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 provides additional context for China’s overseas infrastructure drive. For example, a large literature in economics suggests that government spending on infrastructure generally has positive effects on economic productivity growth (e.g. Reference AschauerAschauer 1998; Reference Sanchez-RoblesSanchez-Robles 1998; Reference Roller and WavermanRoller and Waverman 2001; Reference Esfahani and Teresa Ramı́rezEsfahani and Ramirez 2003). Infrastructure can generate short-run economic boosts by stimulating investment and employment, and can also produce long-term productivity increases as projects become active and begin to reshape economic activity (Reference Leduc and WilsonLeduc and Wilson 2013).Footnote ²¹ Big infrastructure projects in particular directly create new employment opportunities (e.g. Reference Ifzal and PerniaAli and Pernia 2003; Reference Stephen, Lyytikäinen, Overman and Sanchis-GuarnerGibbons et al. 2019) which can be politically valuable to governments. On balance, existing research suggests infrastructure promotes economic growth, though there is less consensus over the precise channels and timing over which this occurs (Reference Calderón and ServénCalderón 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 infrastructure 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. Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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 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 (Reference Richard, Dreher and FuchsBluhm et al. 2021). Other recent studies report similar findings of positive, short-term economic impacts of Chinese infrastructure (e.g. Reference De Soyres, Mulabdic and RutaDe Soyres, Mulabdic, and Ruta 2020; Reference MuellerMueller 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 (Reference Warmerdam and van DijkWarmerdam and van Dijk 2013; Reference Guo and JiangGuo and Jiang 2021; Reference Oya and SchaeferOya and Schaefer 2023). Chinese-financed projects that mitigate infrastructure bottlenecks may also help local firms become more productive, particularly those lacking access to quality transportation options (Reference Marchesi, Masi and PaulMarchesi, 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. Reference Warner, Berg and PattilloWarner, Berg, and Pattillo 2014). Assessing the economic impacts of large infrastructure projects is difficult because of their scale, long implementation time, and financial and operational complexity (Reference Leduc and WilsonLeduc 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 unprecedented 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. Reference Duflo and PandeDuflo 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, Reference Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius and RothengatterFlyvbjerg et al. (2003; Reference Flyvbjerg2017, 12) suggest that these projects follow “iron laws”: the majority are consistently “over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.” 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 megaprojects and similarly finds that over 65 percent “failed to meet business objectives” (Reference MerrowMerrow 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 (Reference BanhamBanham 2020, 16). These tendencies are no less likely in developing countries, where infrastructure has always tended to take longer than expected to implement (Reference Calderón and ServénCalderón and Servén 2014; Reference Estache and FayEstache and Fay 2007).Footnote ²²

Other researchers have similarly documented how government investments in infrastructure and other large-scale interventions often disappoint. Reference ScottScott (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 governments sponsored infrastructure projects that envisioned socioeconomic transformation and justified repression (Reference LorenziniLorenzini 2019, 13–14).

When governments become captivated by infrastructure visions and promises, they also can struggle to identify and select socially optimal projects. As Reference Anand, Gupta and AppelAnand, 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 infrastructure investment costs and benefits, political incentives can lead them to investment large sums in socioeconomically wasteful infrastructure (e.g. Reference Robinson and TorvikRobinson 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 architects, planners, and consumers may derive “pleasure” from “building and using something very large that is also iconic and beautiful” (Reference FlyvbjergFlyvbjerg 2017, 6). These and other individual-level “sublimes” can lead project supporters to neglect thorough cost-benefit analyses and subvert potential opposition voices that would otherwise serve as accountability mechanisms. Reference Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius and RothengatterFlyvbjerg et al. (2003, 5) note that even in democratic contexts, project advocates often shun “established practices of good governance, transparency and participation in political and administrative decision making.” The sheer financial and operational scale and complexity of large infrastructure further make it vulnerable to a suite of challenges, including corruption, public-private coordination 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, Reference KaplanKaplan (2021) describes Chinese overseas development loans for 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 measurements; rather, many contributing factors must be observed and analyzed over the long term” (Reference TangTang 2021, 81–82).

These general pitfalls of large infrastructure should also sound familiar to observers of the BRI. For example, Chinese government-financed infrastructure 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 accountability, but has no effect on “vertical” accountability between rulers and their constituents (Reference Ping, Wang and ChangPing, Wang, and Chang 2022). Development projects provided by the Chinese government are also associated with higher levels of corruption in local communities that host them (Reference Samuel, Elkink and KellyBrazys, Elkink, and Kelly 2017; Reference Isaksson and KotsadamIsaksson 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. Reference CambaCamba 2021).Footnote 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 (Reference Malik, Parks and RussellMalik et al. 2021, 132). The same study finds that ninety-one projects that underperformed 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 (Reference ChenChen 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 (Reference WangWang 2022).

In short, Chinese overseas infrastructure projects exhibit many of the properties and tendencies associated with infrastructure in other contexts. It is also 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 stakeholders 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 cornerstones. 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 infrastructure, 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” (Reference Carse, Harvey, Jensen and MoritaCarse 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” (Reference FlyvbjergFlyvbjerg 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. Reference LarkinLarkin (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. Reference Anand, Gupta and AppelAnand, 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 experiences of everyday life and to expectations of the future.”Footnote ²⁴

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 measurement. For example, in the context of Chinese development finance, “infrastructure” 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 development 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 physical infrastructure projects financed by China’s government in other countries.Footnote ²⁵ 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 contractors, even though this is also an already large and growing component of China’s global development footprint (e.g. Reference LeutertLeutert 2019; Reference ZhangZhang 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.Footnote ²⁶

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 negotiated 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 development 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. Reference MengaMenga 2015, 485). As discussed in the next section, visibility is an important feature that enables host country governments to brand infrastructure projects and advertise them to large audiences at home and abroad (e.g. Reference HirschmanHirschman 1967; Reference Simone, Mahmud and WintersDietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018; Reference Baldwin and WintersBaldwin and Winters 2020). Second, and relatedly, global infrastructure is national in scope within host countries. Financially and spatially large infrastructure, typically negotiated by (or at least involving approval from) national governments and possessing 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.Footnote ²⁷ First, high-profile infrastructure projects are massive economic projects typically motivated by a mix of commercial and political considerations (Reference StrangeStrange 2023a). High-profile infrastructure 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.

In addition to being highly visible and nationally salient, high-profile infrastructure 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 infrastructure 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 infrastructure 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 social structures (Reference HirschmanHirschman 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 (Reference WintersWinters 2019; Reference Strange, Plantan and LeutertStrange, Plantan, and Leutert 2023). These projects also involve longer implementation timelines, more detailed and lengthier contracts, and relatively complicated financing arrangements.

Prestige projects are the second class of Chinese global infrastructure discussed 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 (Reference TullTull 2006; Reference BräutigamBräutigam 2011; Reference SwedlundSwedlund 2017).

Most prestige projects have been financed as nonrepayable turnkey or “complete projects” (成套项目) in which China’s government is responsible for project design, construction, and maintenance.Footnote ²⁸ Chinese financing for prestige infrastructure is typically provided via nonrepayable grants or interest-free or 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 compared 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.Footnote ²⁹ Political symbols are difficult to define due to their ubiquity (e.g. Reference EdelmanEdelman 1972; Reference DittmerDittmer 1977; Reference O’NeillO’Neill 2001), and national symbols here refer generally to representations of national themes or ideas embedded in infrastructure projects. Prestige projects themselves can become national symbols or instead can transmit higher-level, national ideals such as modernity, progress, or unity (Reference SteinbergSteinberg 1987; Reference van der Westhuizenvan 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 operationalizing 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 (Reference StrangeStrange 2023a; Reference StrangeStrange 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; surveying, maintenance, or other supplementary work; supplementary or auxiliary 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.Footnote 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.Footnote ³¹ The Chinese government 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, approximately 1,500 of which were provided before 2000.

Combining data on China’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century global infrastructure provides useful context for the BRI. Figure 1 plots the number of global infrastructure projects – including both high-profile and prestige projects – committed annually by China’s government since 1949.Footnote 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 objectives 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.

Figure 1 Global Infrastructure salience in Chinese overseas development projects, 1949–2017.

Source: Reference Custer, Dreher and ElstonCuster et al. (2021); Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher et al. (2022); Reference StrangeStrange (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

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.

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: Reference StrangeStrange (2023a).

Prestige projects are smaller and less numerous than high-profile infrastructure, 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.Footnote ³³ Figure B3 in the online Appendix maps the global 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.

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

Source: Reference StrangeStrange (2023b)

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, I examine the factors that shape the global allocation of high-profile infrastructure and find that commercial considerations play an important role (Reference StrangeStrange 2023a). This finding is largely consistent with that of Reference Dreher, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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 concentrated 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 populations (Reference StrangeStrange 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. Reference de Mesquita, Bruce, Siverson and SmithBueno de Mesquita et al. 2003; Reference Robinson and TorvikRobinson 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 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 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 (Reference BrazinskyBrazinsky 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 (Reference IsmaelIsmael 1971; Reference MonsonMonson 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 TAZARA would 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 workers 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 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.Footnote ³⁴

Figure 4 TAZARA railway (坦赞铁路).

Source: CIDCA

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 (Reference Zhou and XiongZhou 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 hydropower 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 (Reference SearseySearsey 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 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.

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)

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.Footnote 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 US$150 million. The port was completed and handed over to Mauritania’s government in July 1986, making it Mauritania’s first deep-water port and China’s second-largest aid project after TAZARA (Reference ShiShi 1989, 145, 199, 202–203). Other forms of 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.

Figure 6 Moramanga-Andranonampango highway (木腊芒加至昂德拉努南邦古公路).

Source: COMPLANT

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 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 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.

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

Source: The Standard

High-profile infrastructure also remained as a component of Chinese development 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 connecting the city of Thanlyin to the former capital of Yangon. Construction on 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).

Figure 8 Thanlyin bridge (仰光–丁茵大桥).

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

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 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” (Reference LorenziniLorenzini 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 pandemic, Nigeria’s ability to repay, and heightened scrutiny of Chinese rail projects in the country.Footnote 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. Reference DouradoDourado 2023). Nor do all initial agreements come to fruition. Many historical and contemporary project proposals have failed to make 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 (Reference Bräutigam, Oqubay and LinBräutigam 2019a).

To summarize, carefully defining and measuring Chinese global infrastructure reveals an important project class that has been a tenacious cornerstone of 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.

4.1 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.Footnote ³⁷ A large literature on the political economy of development finance shows that donor and creditor governments supply development finance – including infrastructure – to pursue influence and reap economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical benefits (e.g. Reference Maizels and NissankeMaizels and Nissanke 1984; Reference Meernik, Krueger and PoeMeernik, Krueger, and Poe 1998; Reference Burnside and DollarBurnside and Dollar 2000). As mentioned in Section 2.2.1, the Chinese government 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. Reference KhaliliKhalili 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. Reference WestadWestad 2005; Reference LathamLatham 2011; Reference MerthaMertha 2014; Reference EngermanEngerman 2018; Reference LorenziniLorenzini 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, “emerging” 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 (Reference StrangeStrange 2023b).

Research on China’s infrastructure-influence nexus has sometimes made strong claims. One study, for example, argues that China’s government envisions 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 deference” (Reference RollandRolland 2017, 137). One book claims that “Whoever is able to build 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” (Reference MaçãesMaçães 2018, 3, 30). Another recent monograph is even more explicit in linking infrastructure 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 (economic) and soft (cultural) power in the process” (Reference RowleyRowley 2020, xxii, 1; emphasis added).Footnote 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. Reference HoHo (2020) suggests that Chinese infrastructure in Southeast Asia wields both structural power and discursive power. Reference HillmanHillman (2019a, 2) specifies twelve influence functions across three stages of financing, design and build, and ownership and operation, from buying policy concessions to collecting intelligence. Others highlight potential security implications of specific types of Chinese-owned or operated overseas infrastructure such as maritime ports (Reference Kardon and LeutertKardon and Leutert 2022), government buildings (Reference MeserveyMeservey 2020), or surveillance systems (Reference GreitensGreitens 2020). Reference Lampton, Selina and KuikLampton, Ho, and Kuik (2020) and Reference HoHo (2020) examine China’s use of rail infrastructure to exercise different forms of influence, including structural dependence, narrative control, military access, and 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. Reference HillmanHillman (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.Footnote ³⁹ Studies such as Reference Lampton, Selina and KuikLampton, Ho, and Kuik (2020) and Reference WongWong (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 negotiations, implementation, and reception, as well as the influence consequences 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.Footnote 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 “infrastructure,” “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. Reference DahlDahl 1984). However, in the context of global infrastructure, a more inclusive, multilayered conceptualization is better equipped to document different influence processes and outcomes (e.g. Reference GohGoh 2014; Reference Kastner and PearsonKastner and Pearson 2021; Reference Fung, Han, Quek and StrangeFung 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.Footnote ⁴¹ First, it can generate “elite influence,” or state-level outcomes that support the donor or lender’s national interests (e.g. Reference Bueno De Mesquita and SmithBueno de Mesquita and Smith 2007; Reference Bueno De Mesquita and SmithBueno de Mesquita and Smith 2009; Reference Dreher, Sturm and Raymond VreelandDreher, Sturm, and Vreeland 2009; Reference Axel, Fuchs, Parks, Strange and TierneyDreher 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 statecraft.” 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 solidarity on various domestic and international political issues, by providing economic carrots to other countries (e.g. Reference Flores-Macias and KrepsFlores-Macias and Kreps 2013; Reference KastnerKastner 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, competence, or other desirable attributes (Reference Eli, Shapiro and FelterBerman, Shapiro, and Felter 2011; Reference Goldsmith, Horiuchi and WoodGoldsmith, Horiuchi, and Wood 2014; Reference Simone, Mahmud and WintersDietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018; Reference Blair, Marty and RoesslerBlair, Marty, and Roessler 2022; Reference Wellner, Dreher, Fuchs, Parks and StrangeWellner et al. Forthcoming).Footnote 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. Reference Goldsmith and HoriuchiGoldsmith and Horiuchi 2012), and states thus care deeply about accumulating it in other countries (Reference Owen IVOwen 2010; Reference Allan, Vucetic and HopfAllan, Vucetic, and Hopf 2018; Reference Brazys and DukalskisBrazys 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 (Reference Simone, Mahmud and WintersDietrich, Mahmud, and Winters 2018).Footnote 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.Footnote ⁴⁴ Compared to other development projects, highly visible global infrastructure is thus particularly likely to affect 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.

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-established 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 (Reference Mani and MukandMani and Mukand 2007; Reference HardingHarding 2015; Reference Lei and Aaron ZhouLei and Zhou 2022). For governments 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 (Reference BriggsBriggs 2012; Reference Weghorst and LindbergWeghorst and Lindberg 2013; Reference Cruz and SchneiderCruz and Schneider 2017; Reference MarxMarx 2018).

Global infrastructure projects offer major potential as national-level economic 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 strategic goals. Though public infrastructure is typically viewed as a public good, some infrastructures also allow states to provide patronage to politically important constituents, and this is one explanation for why countries like Ghana and Zambia, to name but two, have historically invested in socioeconomically questionable projects (e.g. Reference Robinson and TorvikRobinson 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 (Reference HerbstHerbst 2000, 42; Reference GuldiGuldi 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. Reference MannMann 1984; Reference TillyTilly 1990; Reference CentenoCenteno 2002). Externally financed infrastructure that serves these functions can similarly provide host country governments with additional capital for enhancing state authority.

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” (Reference Müller-Mahn, Mkutu and KiokoMüller-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 government’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 (Reference Sajjad and JavedSajjad and Javed 2022, 1498–1499). As Reference Larkin, Anand, Gupta and AppelLarkin (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.Footnote 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 Reference BourdieuBourdieu (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 (Reference SteinbergSteinberg 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 performative tools (e.g. Reference BourdieuBourdieu 1991; Reference WedeenWedeen 2015; Reference DingDing 2020).

Another possibility is that infrastructure offers otherwise unavailable opportunities 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 (Reference FrankFrank 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 (Reference TerrefeTerrefe 2020; Reference GebreluelGebreluel 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.

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 audiences. 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 (Reference DeHartDeHart 2012; Reference VerriVerri 2020).

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

Source: Central South Architectural Design Institute

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 domestic political value of Chinese-financed infrastructure projects for host country leaders seeking political security and legitimation at home (e.g. Reference Dreher, Fuchs and HodlerDreher et al. 2019; Reference Kuik and SchneiderKuik 2021; Reference WangWang 2022).Footnote ⁴⁶ Their domestic political value also makes global infrastructures useful for China’s international interests.

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, Reference Barnett and DuvallBarnett and Duvall 2005 and Reference LukesLukes 2005). This section suggests that Chinese high-profile infrastructure (and prestige infrastructure, to a lesser extent) often produce “influence externalities” for China’s government. Influence externalities are changes to a state’s international influence that occur unintentionally and independently of the state’s objectives due to changes in behavior or perceptions by foreign state or non-state actors.Footnote ⁴⁸ Intuitively, though visibility and national salience make global infrastructure initially attractive for the host country government and for China’s government, the same features also create and amplify unintentional influence consequences.

The suggestion that infrastructure creates unintended consequences is certainly not new. Research in other fields documents how infrastructure generates unexpected economic, social, political, and environmental outcomes (e.g. Reference ScottScott 1998; Reference LiLi 2007; Reference GuldiGuldi 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 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 assessment” (Larkin 2018, 177). Global infrastructure is contentious, and different local, national, and international actors interpret and contest its multidimensional costs and benefits.Footnote 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 (Reference Wells and GleasonWells 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. Reference BissioBissio 2017). World Bank-supported infrastructure has historically been vulnerable to political capture in developing countries (Reference WintersWinters 2014), and this has led to major learnings and adjustments with regards to project design, bidding, and implementation processes (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-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 (Reference WadeWade 2016).

Other major donors and creditors have also encountered negative, unintended 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 (Reference HillmanHillman 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 infrastructure project – a convention center in Myanmar – for personal benefit (Reference KimKim 2018). The scandal contributed to widespread negative sentiment towards Park, who was eventually impeached. Put simply, negative unintended 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 outcomes, but as an illustration of two important processes that complicate the relationship between infrastructure and influence.Footnote 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 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 organizations (NGOs), opposition parties, and other domestic actors, even in relatively democratic settings (e.g. Reference Flyvbjerg, Bruzelius and RothengatterFlyvbjerg 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 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 externalities 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 (Reference KinneyKinney 2022). Bottom-up mobilization succeeded when the project was cancelled in 2019.Footnote ⁵¹ CSOs and labor groups in Zambia have similarly found success in mobilizing to oppose potentially 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 (Reference LeslieLeslie 2016).

The suspended Myitsone Dam in Myanmar, which possesses important economic and latent geostrategic value for China’s government, is another oft-cited example of how local stakeholders mobilized in ways that shifted China’s influence. 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 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 (Reference ChanChan 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 (Reference ChanChan 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 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 (Reference Liu and LimLiu and Lim 2019).

Figure 10 East coast rail link (东海岸衔接铁道).

Source: Xinhua

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 (Reference Lim, Chen and XianbaiLim, 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 favorable terms and at a lower cost to Malaysia (Reference Lim, Chen and XianbaiLim, 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, controversial 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 (Reference TrittoTritto 2020; Reference CambaCamba 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 countries, 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 negotiating position for ongoing and planned infrastructure has shifted – and sometimes worsened – relative to counterpart governments whose hands can become credibly 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 countries (Reference Kazantsev, Medvedeva and SafranchukKazantsev, Medvedeva, and Safranchuk 2021; Reference UmarovUmarov 2021).

Second, political mobilization is not always based on negative sentiment toward Chinese global infrastructure. In fact, despite strongly negative international rhetoric toward the BRI – particularly in the United States and other Western democracies – elite and popular attitudes in dozens of BRI host countries are considerably more mixed (see 4.3.3). Concerns about debt sustainability, transparency, and accountability notwithstanding, China’s specialization in global infrastructure still appears welcome among many audiences in developing countries. Both materially and reputationally, China’s government now has a comparative advantage relative to other foreign financiers 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).Footnote 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. Reference BräutigamBräutigam 2019b; Reference Richard, Dreher and FuchsBluhm et al. 2021; Reference Malik, Parks and RussellMalik et al. 2021).

Host country politicians sometimes highlight these advantages when mobilizing 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.Footnote 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 (Reference Rinck, Hartmann and NoesseltRinck 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.Footnote ⁵⁴