The geopolitics of South–South infrastructure development: Chinese-financed energy projects in the global South

Mohan, Giles; Tan‐Mullins, May

doi:10.1177/0042098018794351

Cited by 51 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…For example, in their early formulation, Corbridge and Agnew (1991) mobilized 'geopolitical-economy' 3 to examine US budget and trade deficits (with respect to defence spending and US geopolitical ambitions in the context of the Cold War) through an analysis of the relational global positionality of the US economy, the role of the US in global politics, and their bearing on uneven geographical development within and outside the United States. In a similar vein, China's BRI can be seen as a complex combination of geopolitics and geoeconomics (Blanchard & Flint, 2017;Lee et al, 2018), both a response to slowing (domestic and global) economic growth in the form of export of excess industrial capacity (Harvey & Nak-Chung, 2017;Zhang, 2017) and as an attempt to secure geopolitical influence and resource markets (Mohan & Tan Mullins, 2018).…”

Section: Infrastructure Financing Geopolitical Economy and Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chinese state-owned 'policy banks', such as the China Development Bank (CDB) and China EXIM Bank are exporting a 'coordinated credit spaces' model, coordinating with Chinese state-owned commercial banks to reduce credit risks, and lending large amounts to portfolios of strategic projects (Chin & Gallagher, 2019). A backbone of the BRI, such financing enables SOEs to access and secure overseas markets for their goods and technology, as well as secure natural resources (Mohan & Tan-Mullins, 2018). Besides the use of SOEs, a main difference in China's approach is its lack of policy conditionality typically associated with Western development bank lending (Chin & Gallagher, 2019;Dunford, 2020; though there is still political pressure, see Mohan & Tan Mullins, 2018).…”

Section: Modalities Of Financing: Blurring Market-state Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A backbone of the BRI, such financing enables SOEs to access and secure overseas markets for their goods and technology, as well as secure natural resources (Mohan & Tan-Mullins, 2018). Besides the use of SOEs, a main difference in China's approach is its lack of policy conditionality typically associated with Western development bank lending (Chin & Gallagher, 2019;Dunford, 2020; though there is still political pressure, see Mohan & Tan Mullins, 2018).…”

Section: Modalities Of Financing: Blurring Market-state Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

Anguelov¹

2020

Area Development and Policy

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In the post-2008 global economy, infrastructure development and financing have risen to the top of the development agenda, emerging as a contested field for global investments involving seemingly divergent interests, objectives, rationalities and practices. Whereas multilateral development banks such as the World Bank advocate the market-based public-private partnership aimed at attracting private finance and deepening marketized governance, China is forging a state-capitalist alternative through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These models are far from mutually exclusive. Through a conjunctural approach, the paper examines the broader trade and financial interdependencies in which these models are entangled, and the geopolitical-economic objectives enframing the emergent infrastructure regime. These are explored vis-à-vis Indonesian infrastructure projects, framed by competition between China and Japan.

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Section: Infrastructure Financing Geopolitical Economy and Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modalities Of Financing: Blurring Market-state Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modalities Of Financing: Blurring Market-state Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

Anguelov¹

2020

Area Development and Policy

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“…The Chinese argue that such a system is able to deliver projects quickly which certainly seems to be true, and is one reason why this form of project funding and delivery is preferred by recipient leaders who often have an eye on political longevity. The World Bank was also negotiating for a loan to develop the gas infrastructure, but as Chen (2016: 2) notes in the context of the contract offered to Sinopec, it ‘provided the Ghanaians with an easy all‐inclusive deal that obviated the need to conduct laborious and independent stages of tendering and financing negotiations’ (see also Mohan and Tan‐Mullins, 2019).…”

Section: Chinese Oil Companies and Ghana's Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Below the Belt? Territory and Development in China's International Rise

Mohan¹

2020

Development and Change

Self Cite

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China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the ‘global South’ which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of ‘global development’, we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine‐grained understanding of how political territories and processes are imagined and produced by and through China's internationalization, focusing on infrastructure as a ‘technology’ of territorialization. Much of the focus on China's internationalization has been on state‐to‐state relations, but this obscures the ‘omni‐channel politics’ that China practises. Using a critical literature review and illustrative case study, this article develops the idea of omni‐channel politics to posit a view of ‘twisted’ territories in which political processes and development outcomes are more complex and contingent.

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“…Critical is, first, opening up the research frame to encompass key actors, especially the intermediaries – such as consultancies, law firms, treasury management advisors and professional associations – as ‘carriers of financialisation’ and market makers whose knowledge and expertise is mobilised and paid for in fees in the engagement and accommodation of commercial and municipal finance. This task will require extending beyond the cast of global North productions to those in the global South such as international aid and financial institutions (Mohan and Tan-Mullins, 2019) and logistics networks and universities (Kanai and Schindler, 2019), and exploring the intertwining of financial and non-governmental actors working inside the state (Farmer and Poulos, 2019). And, second, it requires deepening the inquiry critically to look beneath and behind the rhetoric and interrogate the substance of state and finance actors’ claims about ‘market demand’, ‘value’ and ‘worth’ in the infrastructure domain (Weber, 2020).…”

Section: What and Where Next?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Book symposium: Pike et al.’s Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure

Pike¹,

O’Brien²,

Strickland³

et al. 2019

Environ Plan A

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Motivations, aims and arguments As part of its investment strategy, Portsmouth City Council in the UK has acquired a DHL distribution centre near Birmingham, a Waitrose store in Somerset, a Matalan warehouse in Swindon, and leased its Isle of Wight ferry link to Canada Life. Why was a local government in southern England buying commercial properties outside its area and letting its local infrastructure to an international insurance company? Political-economic curiosity about such phenomena was a central motivation for writing Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure. The current episode of financialisation is marked by the increasing involvement and influence of financial actors, relations, rationales and practices on people, firms, states and places. Local governments in the UK and elsewhere are embroiled in such financialisation. Attempting to cope with fiscal stress with often limited powers and resources, local governments are being drawn into economic and financial strategies, instruments and commitments that extend and deepen their relations with new actors and sites within and beyond their administrative areas-including distribution and retail firms, commercial properties, new types of funding and financing techniques and various kinds of financial institutions. Amid this financialisation, further impetus for the book came from seeing national and local governments struggling to fund, finance and govern urban infrastructure, the erosion of the collective good dimensions of infrastructure and its uneven transformation into financial assets and revenue streams, the explanatory limits of existing urban governance archetypes and transformation frameworks, enduring managerialism especially in highly centralised states such as the UK and stirring interest in alternatives. Who owns, runs and pays for infrastructure? This question crystallised our concerns. Responses to it determine infrastructural provision, its costs and which people and places can access it and on what terms. The book's aims are twofold: to investigate and better understand the engagements of financialisation with city governance and infrastructural provision and to identify the wider and longer-term implications of such financialisation for urban and regional development, politics and policy. A central contention is that explaining contemporary city infrastructure and its governance needs a better understanding of financialisation. The book works with an interdisciplinary understanding of infrastructure systems that provide the services we all rely upon for our day-today lives. Services such as heat, light, hydration, shelter, connection and mobility enable our basic daily tasks of cooking, eating, resting, washing, communicating with each other and moving around on bikes, boats, cars, foot, trains and trams. Infrastructure underpins and connects sites for fundamental human and social activities in the home, and places to live, learn, work and play across the world. Infrastructure is made up of inescapably geographical interconnection...

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The geopolitics of South–South infrastructure development: Chinese-financed energy projects in the global South

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Cited by 51 publications

References 32 publications

Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

Banking ‘development’: the geopolitical–economy of infrastructure financing

Below the Belt? Territory and Development in China's International Rise

Book symposium: Pike et al.’s Financialising City Statecraft and Infrastructure

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