"Influence Nodes: China’s High-Profile Global Development Projects" - By CWP Alum Austin Strange

Governments around the world, including that of the United States, have grown increasingly anxious about the nature and impacts of Chinese-financed global development projects. One source of concern is China’s pursuit of influence via foreign aid and less concessional, debt-based financing in other countries. But given the scale and complexity of China’s overseas development portfolio, expectations that development dollars translate linearly into political influence are unrealistic. This essay argues for instead focusing on the major nodes of China’s overseas development program most relevant for questions of influence: High-profile development projects. These projects possess outsized visibility and political salience in host countries. These features enable high-profile projects to serve as unique sources of political capital for host country leaders. China’s government can generate influence from this capital, but also faces risks to its international influence created by these projects that are often difficult to manage. Based on original data collection, this essay discusses how high-profile projects can increase or decrease China’s elite and popular influence. It provides a nodal rather than linear lens for considering how overseas development projects affect China’s net influence. This approach complicates calculations of influence, but suggests that if anything, China has likely yielded lower net influence than often assumed by policymakers and analysts.

- https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/documents/Strange_Influence%20Nodes.pdf

Austin Strange is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Hong Kong and a 2021–22 Wilson China Fellow1

Photo Credit: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/uploads/documents/Strange_Influence%20Nodes.pdf