Geographies of infrastructure III: Infrastructure with Chinese characteristics

Abstract

For 25 years, China has staked its development on domestic and global infrastructure expansion. This third progress report on geographies of infrastructure explores what China’s far-reaching infrastructure venture means for critical infrastructure studies. Reviewing China’s infrastructure-driven urban growth, the Belt and Road Initiative and their links, three recommendations are advanced: (1) a reengagement with the state that takes its geographical and temporal diversity seriously, (2) an approach to infrastructure as part of a complex network of state projects with long-term ends, and (3) a concern with infrastructures of repression and confinement in wider processes of making things ‘flow’.