From Chinese dam building in Africa to the Belt and Road Initiative: Assembling infrastructure projects and their linkages

Abstract

This paper aims to build a political economic geography of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We draw on assemblage thinking and the notion of the Chinese Water Machine to examine Chinese practices and business-related outcomes of building a dam in Africa, stressing the complicated interactions between different actors. Based on fieldwork in China and Ghana, as well as documentary data, this paper argues that Chinese engagement with Africa is a global enterprise, in which players come from China, the recipient, and other countries; and that project-level organisation and implementation under BRI umbrella will also likely be a joint production by all such players, elaborated in a path dependent way but subject to the spatial embeddedness of specific projects. Yet whether BRI-related projects can advance the specific geopolitical and economic interests of China is uncertain: not only have Chinese players been co-constructing such infrastructure projects with non-Chinese players, but also Beijing's role in forging the expansion of Chinese corporations' business abroad is not clear.