Panel 14 (Schmitz)
Impact of China’s Infrastructure Projects at Home and Abroad
Panel organizer
Frederik Schmitz, M. A. (University of Bonn)
Contributors
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Panel abstract
China’s accelerated modernization is having a lasting impact on stabilization of political power/influence in China and in cooperation with other countries. It has proven that it has the potential to overtake the developed world, not just simply catch up with them. China’s increasing technical and political prowess, a Chinese version of modernity, led to greater influence beyond the country’s borders. This panel will examine how Chinese infrastructure projects affect China’s political, economic, and social development – sustainable in a Chinese manner. In particular, comparisons will be made to show whether and how the logistical, data, control, and memory infrastructures that symbolize modernity with Chinese characteristics have national and transnational implications. By inquiring about various infrastructure cases, we aim to unfold and clarify how modernization in China has already altered and in some cases fundamentally transformed the ontological and discursive components of China’s politics, economy, and culture. Examining the constitutive role of infrastructures in the shifting patterns of spatiality, connectivity, subjectivity, and temporality in the world, we seek to contribute to enriching theoretical debates about the role of emerging technologies in the Global South and its impact on late industrial societies, as well as shifts in the international order. In addition, new empirical evidence, based on qualitative and quantitative methods will be presented to develop the study of infrastructures in the context of Chinese policymaking – domestic and abroad. our goal is for this panel to provide multiple perspectives on Chinese infrastructures.
Paper submission
If you want to participate in this panel, please submit your paper proposal here.