ABSTRACT
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is reorienting global development. Few scholars, however, query relationships between green silk road discourse, BRI infrastructure, partner state development goals, and environmental governance. This article details the roots of green silk road discourse in efforts to environmentally engineer China's desert landscapes. Much like large-scale nature-based infrastructure projects in China, BRI infrastructure projects abroad precipitate a range of socioeconomic and environmental outcomes. Through juxtaposing terrestrial infrastructure development in Ethiopia with maritime infrastructure development in Djibouti, the article demonstrates how different types of BRI infrastructure projects shape environmental governance and advance the development agendas of partner countries. Sugar plantations, roads, railways, and energy infrastructure in Ethiopia further Ethiopian state development plans while transforming Indigenous people's relations to their land and livelihoods. In Djibouti, port infrastructure and military bases figure centrally in strategic rentiership for the Djiboutian state with ancillary effects on fisheries and international trade. The article illustrates how relative articulations between East African central government development interests, environmental governance, and infrastructure are mediated by varieties of Chinese capital. The comparative analysis disrupts simplistic narratives of “win-win” partnerships and “China as threat” to partner state autonomy.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Jianqing Chen and Adam Liebman for thoughtful feedback on earlier drafts of this article, participants at the 2021 International Convention of Asian Scholars Conference where I presented this work, as well as the anonymous reviewers and CAS editor Robert Shepherd for their incisive comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 For a chronological account of transitions in naming and renaming market-driven extensions of China's logistical and infrastructure construction systems, see Rimmer Citation2018.
7 I use the term “partner state” instead of the more commonly used term “host country” because “host” connotes a general passivity not exhibited by BRI partnerships, which in reality are highly dynamic.
19 Boston University Global Development Policy Center Citation2022. East Africa, for the purpose of these figures, includes the following countries: Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda, Somalia, and Uganda.
24 Chiyemura, Gambino, Zajontz 2022.
31 For example, the corporation has constructed 4,525 km2 of such plantations just in Hangjin Barrier, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. See UNEP Citation2015 26.
42 In addition to representatives from Russia, there were also participants from China, Mongolia, Belarus, the United States, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the United Kingdom, Cambodia, and countries in Latin America.
43 Interview, October 2020.
45 For example, see the Global Civil Society Call Citation2020.
47 Carr Citation2017; Hodbod et al. Citation2019. The Omo Valley has historically supported over 500,000 Indigenous agro-pastoralists, including the Dassanech, Nyangatom, Mursi, and Bodi among others.
49 Interview September 2020.
57 Rebel armies attacked ESC sugar infrastructure in early 2022, temporarily halting production. See Tadesse Citation2022.
58 Personal interview. August 2020.
60 Exact figures for salary increases are not publicly available. But these general trends are discussed in Dreissen Citation2019.
69 China Merchants Group is known for developing the “Shekou industrial park, port, city model” in Shenzhen during early market-reforms in the 1980s. See Wan et al. Citation2020.
74 McCabe Citation2019. By way of contrast, the United States has a military presence in eighteen foreign ports (Griffiths Citation2020). Despite the contrast in numbers, US media outlets routinely decry China's Djibouti base as a global threat. On the trope of China as threat, see Byrnes Citation2020.
76 In addition to China's military base, Djibouti hosts the United States’ Camp Lemonnier, France's Base Aerienne 188, an Italian military support base, and Japan's Self-Defense Force Base. The World Bank (Citation2018, 9) reports that the Djibouti government generates 19 percent of its revenues from military bases.
83 Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs PRC Citation2017.
84 Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs PRC Citation2017.
87 China's fisheries account for over 15 percent of global fishing annually. See Barkin and Desombre Citation2013.
88 Interview September 2021.
93 National Planning Commission 2020, 15–16, 140.
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Funding
Fellowship support for researching and writing this article has been provided by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Princeton University's Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Notes on contributors
Jesse Rodenbiker
Jesse Rodenbiker is an Associate Research Scholar at the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University and an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University. He also is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and a Wilson China Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His book, Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China will be published in 2023 by Cornell University Press.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6889-4958
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