Ritual narratives of infrastructure ceremonies: Time, demands, and relations in modern Chinese history

Abstract

In recent years, attention has been drawn to infrastructure groundbreaking ceremonies and their ritual and political effects. However, infrastructure ceremonies in China, the world’s largest builder and supplier of infrastructure and the ‘nation of rites’, are somehow overlooked. Using insights from infrastructure and ritual studies, and leveraging narratives from Chinese official media, this study aims to explore how infrastructure rituals shape the sociopolitical significance of infrastructure as technical artefact. Through the Chinese case, we find that three elements of infrastructure ritual narratives (time, demands, and relations) are focused, restructured, and amplified. These elements are then interwoven into broader sociopolitical narratives spanning various eras of modern Chinese history. Our aim is to provide a perspective for a deeper understanding of the sociopolitical production of infrastructure meanings through the case of Chinese ceremonies.