Confronting global infrastructural capitalism: the triple logic of the 'vanguard' and its inevitable spatial and class contradictions in China's high-speed rail program

ABSTRACT

We take infrastructure as a ‘keyword’ in foregrounding the production and the reproduction of contemporary capitalism as well as its complexities and contradictions. To tease out the capitalist dynamics of the contemporary moment as infrastructural capitalism, this paper moves beyond a dichotomous constellation of the logic of capital and the territorial logic of power, to argue how a triple logic- capital, power, and culture informs the cultural politics, attempting to simultaneously resolve the economic crisis and glorify China’s fast-speed capitalism. As the vanguard of Chinese infrastructural politics, the high-speed rail spearheads the Chinese spatial economic system towards one that is not an alternative to capitalism but, at best, a variegated form of moving capitalism, which we call infrastructural capitalism. Illuminating the political role of the infrastructural projects in creating invisible social contradictions, this article highlights a wide array of affected working-class masses who take individual and collective actions that result in the reversion of ‘the vanguard’, dissolving the condensation of the materiality of infrastructural capitalism into the global assemblage of unpredictable but inescapable contradictions driving China into global imperial rivalries and class conflicts. (178 words)

KEYWORDS:

• High-speed rail
• infrastructural capitalism
• logic of power
• class conflict
• cultural politics
• China

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to two reviewers who provide valuable comments, and special thanks to Stephen Chan, Jin Shuheng and a group of graduate and undergraduate students who have participated in the study group in 2020-2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 CGTN.com is the official website for China Global Television Network, which is financed by the Chinese government to provide its own views to the international community. Available at: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-03-04/It-s-a-China-thing-High-speed-railway-leads-the-world-Ym6EIndtVS/index.html (accessed 3 October 2021).

2 By monopoly capital, we refer not only to its defining feature of the dominance of monopolistic firms in capitalist economies that operate in oligopolistic industries and sectors, but also the corporate global value chain that is often aided by the state power and financialization of capital. See Ernest Mandel (1999), Late Capitalism, London and New York: Verso.

3 Rail infrastructure was determined by speed-acceleration technology such as design, construction, maintenance, and repair, especially in the operation of the railway line able to accommodate speeds of 300 km per hour or greater.

4 Railway mileage increased from 52,000 km in 1978, to 976,000 km in 2012 (Qiu 2020:165).

5 China echoes 2009 stimulus with railway spending boost. Bloomberg News, 17 July 2012. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-16/china-raises-2012-rail-investment-9-to-70-billion-ndrc-says (accessed 9 November 2020).

6 At the same time, China Railway increased the pace of shareholding system reform. China Railway played an active role in listing its subsidiaries, such as the Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway Co., Ltd., expanding debt-for-equity swaps, promoting equity financing, and attracting public capital as a direct investment to reduce its debt ratio. It further invited the leading private capital from technology, e-commerce, and logistics sectors to participate in mixed-ownership reform. The delivery company SF Express Co Ltd., for instance, collaborated with China Railway to form a joint cargo venture. This restructuring has enabled China Railway to become more flexible and efficiently market-oriented so as to achieve diversified operations to increase profits and reduce debts.

7 China targets big expansion of high-speed rail network. Argus blog, 21 August 2020. Available at: https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2134482-china-targets-big-expansion-of-highspeed-rail-network (accessed 14 January 2021).

8 By 2019, China’s railway network had covered 98 percent of the cities with a population of more than 200,000, up from 94 percent in 2012; and 86 percent of cities with a population of 500,000 of more; additionally, all provincial capitals in the country except for Lhasa had connected to the high-speed railway network. The average number of passengers taking China’s high-speed trains each day had risen from around 1.07 million in 2012–6.38 million in 2019, representing an average annual growth of 29.1 percent. See ‘What will China’s railway network be like in 2035?’, People’s Daily, 20 August 2020. Available at: http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0820/c90000-9736637.html (accessed 2 January 2021).

9 Xi declares China a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Xinhua News, 1 July 2021. Available at: http://english.www.gov.cn/news/topnews/202107/01/content_WS60ddd47ec6d0df57f98dc472.html (accessed 2 November 2021).

10 The railway plays an important role in the rural vitalization. Guangming Ribao, 9 March 2021. Available at: https://news.gmw.cn/2021-03/09/content_34670140.htm (accessed 2 November 2021).

11 Expanding transport network brings country together, links it to the world. CHINADAILY, 29 May 2021. Available at: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202105/29/WS60b18431a31024ad0bac241e.html (accessed 3 November 2021).

12 Villagers were dissatisfied with the compensation for the land acquisition for the high-speed rail projects, driving a car into the demolishers. Caixin News, 9 December 2011. Available at: http://www.nctudi.com/news/detail-16491.html (accessed 1 November 2020).

13 Disputes over under-compensation for land acquisition and demolition of the Beijing–Tangshan intercity railway in a village. Sina News, 25 July 2020. Available at: https://news.sina.com.tw/article/20200725/35863436.html (accessed 9 November 2020).

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 The Beijing–Shanghai high-speed rail project was accused of owing 8 million migrant workers’ wages. 66wz news, 23 October 2010. Available at: http://news.66wz.com/system/2010/10/23/102144541.shtml (accessed 12 December 2020).

17 Migrant workers were attacked by more than 20 armed people for requesting that China Railway pay their delayed salary. Sohu News, 20 March 2020. Available at: https://m.sohu.com/n/556303860/ (accessed 28 November 2020).

18 Ibid.

19 The railway bureau will streamline one-third of its employees and employ a large number of supplementary dispatch workers. Sohu News, 17 May 2019. Available at: https://www.sohu.com/a/314823375_664807 (accessed 28 November 2020).

20 Ibid.

21 If the railway drivers worked for 203 h per month, they would be guaranteed a monthly wage of 7,000 yuan, as well as an hourly overtime pay of 50 yuan if they exceed the specified working hours. Available at: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/55653063 (accessed 11 January 2021).

22 In its 2018 audit report, the Beijing Group released information that it employed 20,436 non-regular employees. See the full reference of the audit report here: https://data.cnki.net/trade/Yearbook/Single/N2019060156?z = Z014 (accessed 21 February 2021).

23 According to the 2017 audit report of the China Railway Beijing Group Co., Ltd., the average yearly salary of the regular employees was 109,660 yuan, while the average yearly salary of the dispatch workers was 65,855 yuan. Available at: https://data.cnki.net/trade/Yearbook/Single/N2019060156?z = Z014 (accessed 21 February 2021).

24 From Workers’ self-made magazine Railroad Workers Bulletin (2016), see p. 11, p. 15, and p. 17. Available at: http://chuangcn.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/%E9%93%81%E8%B7%AF%E5%B7%A5%E4%BA%BA%E9%80%9A%E8%AE%AF%E7%AC%AC3%E6%9C%9F.pdf (accessed 12 January 2021).

25 Railroad Workers’ Bulletin, first issue. Available at: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/38630810 (accessed 2 October 2021)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ngai Pun

PUN Ngai is Chair Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. She is the author of Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace and Dying for Apple: Foxconn and Chinese Workers (co-author). Her work has been published in journals such as positions, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Cultural Anthropology and Sociology.

Peier Chen

CHEN Peier is a PhD student in the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. Her research interests are digital capitalism, labour and social reproduction.